


Island Girl

by FC2000



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blue Lagoon vibes, Cuz i can, Desert Island, Exploring Sexuality, F/M, Kylo can't people either, Perverts on planes, Rey's a weird one in this fic, Too much nudity, good luck, now with creepy island magic, rey has feelings, she doesn't know what they are though, years of social isolation will do that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:26:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 42,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9596270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FC2000/pseuds/FC2000
Summary: He's survived a horrible plane crash.  Now he's trapped on a desert island filled with all sorts of creatures and a girl who hasn't seen a human being in years.  Tensions are so high that either they'll kill each other or have hot island sex.  We'll just have to wait and see.





	1. The Girl

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a rewrite of a fic I wrote on here last year called "The Island". It was gonna involve all the characters from TFA and be this big thing. However, I quit on the fic after chapter two. I just found it too fucking hard to write a large scale story with so many characters and storylines when all I really want to focus on is the Reylo (don't we all?) and with that old fic it was gonna take too long to get there. So, when it comes to my writing and willingness to write, I've come to the conclusion that LESS IS MORE. So this fic will be strictly a Rey and Kylo Ren story focused on just those two characters and the eventual craziness that will come from it.

A loud boom tore through the calm whispers of the jungle night nearly bursting it's way into the metal shelter. The girl inside found her heart beating and her ears bombarded with the cry of creatures. She knew all the noises of the island. She knew what normal was and the loud boom, the roar in the distance, wasn't it. It sounded like no creature she had ever heard before...or maybe she had heard it before…

The sky was too gray, too dark, for her to see any possibility of a source. All she could do once she got outside the shelter was to grab her makeshift spear and force her way to the trees. The noises surrounded the entire island, making it impossible for her to decide what direction to go in. Yet when she looked up at the sky, she could have sworn to have caught a glimpse of a tiny yellow flash in the sky to her right. So she opted for that direction.

She was forced to stop when the roar got so loud, it almost sounded like a screech. She covered her ears. What if it was that flash in the sky and what if it was hurtling towards the island?

It made her remember something about falling stars. Someone had told her about them long ago...how you could make wishes on them.

She didn't know such star could make such a horrible noise but still she relented, dropping to her knees and silently wishing on that flash of light that it didn't fall onto her "home".

After a minute, a sudden and disturbing silence. She uncovered her ears and thought she had gone deaf...until she heard the waves, and the wind, and the nightly rituals of the creatures again. It wasn't right. None of it. You don't ignore a noise like that and expect everything to be fine again. So the girl had no choice but to make her way to the beach.

Strange enough, the sky began to clear again giving her enough light to investigate. She used to love the beach...she used to love sitting in the sand looking out to the sea and waiting. That was back when she had hope, when she wasn't alone. 

She saw the sticks coming out of the sand. The graveyard. She hadn't been back to this part of the island in a long time. Not because she was scared, but because of the painful memories, the painful reminder of how things were at her earliest. There weren't as many sticks as before, a side effect of the makeshift graves being too close to the tides.

Past the graves, she could see it...a strange long black mess that had become washed up on the shore. It didn't resemble any creature that she had seen on the island, or in her dreams. Yet as she approached the seemingly unmoving mess, it was taking on a shape she had only seen in her reflection and in her "reading material".

She turned it over and saw a human face.

A man. 

A pale face with a streak of red when the rest of him was adorned in black.

Remembering people was something the girl had a hard time with. She tried to keep the thought of seeing one ever again from her mind, yet she knew that there was a whole world of them outside existing and living in a life outside of her own. It made her feel so forgotten all this time. For a brief moment, she had a foolish hope that the man came for her but it couldn't be. She had been here too long and wouldn't be recognizable anymore. Besides, what did she have to go back to?

The man resembled something found in dreams and in stories with his unusual dress and his unusual black silky curly hair. But the streak the girl recognized right away as blood. The man was hurt. Had he really come from that boom, from that flash in the sky? Was he even from this planet at all? Perhaps it wouldn't matter. He seemed dead.

Then the girl flinched. She could have sworn that there was movement in his face. It was hard to tell with all the blood.

She thought that maybe something back at her shelter would help but she would have to get the man there. So after much struggling, she managed to pick him up by the arms and drag the stranger backwards into the jungle. Thank god, the ground was smooth and sandy.

The girl dropped the man carelessly just at the entrance to the shelter. Amongst her piles of useful and useless things was her “reading material”, much of which she couldn't use due to her lack of reading ability. She learned to rely on pictures more than words. In the pocket behind a worn-out seat was a large folded yellow card showing pictures of a person pressing hands against the chest of another person. She wondered if maybe this would help.

After using some clothes to wipe the blood from the man's face, she then proceeded to copycat was she was seeing the people do in the pictures. It seemed gross, having to put her lips to the man's and seemingly breathe in. She even had to open his mouth too.

Yet she started tasting something other than blood as her lips touched his. It frightened her and yet fascinated her at the same time. 

The man had really soft lips.


	2. The Man

He felt something pressing down on his chest. The ocean? The wreckage? He knew he was dead. The plane exploding and breaking apart in midair made sure of that. Now he felt air being forced down his throat. The chest pain and the airflow went on like a pattern. He wanted to stop it but he was too weak to get his body to work.

His lips taste of blood and something soft yet familiar. The vision was blurry but he could see it. Another human being and she was performing CPR on him.

 _'Thank god'_ , he thought.

His lifesaver gasped as soon as he did. Much to his relief, the man was now breathing normally again. But now all he wanted to do was sleep. 

He felt her fingers touching his cheek, a comforting assurance. Soon he would be in a hospital. Soon his nightmare would be over.

The last thing he wondered when he close his eyes was why he wasn't hearing any sirens.

…

His back was sore. He wasn't sleeping in a hospital bed. That was for sure.

Instead, he was sleeping on a pile of broken chairs. Then he looked around and saw all the vine-covered metal enclosing in his space. Was he in a junkyard? No, it was a plane, he assumed his plane, despite the fact that he could have sworn being blown out during the initial chaos. This part of the plane must have dropped on him somehow without crushing him.

Aside from the birds and the wind, there was no other noise. And he wanted so badly to investigate because the lack of human voices was terribly unsettling. Once he got his head together about what happened, he had to accept that there was no rescue...and quite possibly, no other survivors…

...footsteps…

The man tried to get up, but the pain in his body wouldn't allow it. Maybe this time, it really was rescue. He didn't expect anyone else who had been on the plane to be competent enough to help him in this situation.

The small door opened to his right letting in much needed light. “Here,” he moaned.

The figure at the door paused. He lifted his head and could recognize the woman as the same one who had given him CPR. She didn't look professionally dressed. In fact, she looked horrendous with her hair tied in 3 messy buns...hair that hadn't been washed in god knows how long. She was wearing torn clothing that she was clearly too small for and not even shoes.

He remembered no young women like her on his plane. What the hell was going on here?

He dropped his head back but the girl continued her cautious approach carrying in her hand half of a shelled fruit. 

“Eat?”

Did he hear her right?

“What? No…,” he said. “I need help.”

The girl ignored him and scooping up some of the fillings from the fruit, she smeared the fruit on his lips causing the man to jerk up and spit out.

It tasted like mango and he hated mangoes.

“What the?” He started coughing out the rest. She was nearly taken aback by the man's quick movements. “Where am I?”

The girl was staring at him not knowing how to answer that. "Plane?"

"What? No, I know it's a plane. I mean where are we at? What country? What city?"

She clearly had no idea. After a few moments of silence she finally said "island".

 _'Great'_ , he thought. “I don't suppose there are other people around?”

“You're a man?” she asked him.

He was now trying to sit up and ease his sore back. “What kind of question is that? Of course I'm a man.”

“Are there people?” she asked him.

Enough of this. “I asked you that! Stop messing around and go get help you crazy woman!!!” He yelled it so loud, that the girl stumbled back causing the plane to echo when her bum hit the ground. Instead of getting up again, the girl started curling up into a ball and crying.

What kind of girl was this? She was clearly too old to be behaving like a child. He could only conclude that maybe she was special needs or mentally ill. But if that had been the case, how was she able to perform CPR on him? 

He had almost forgotten that she saved his life. Way to be an asshole about it.

“I'm sorry,” he said. He decided to finally get away from his makeshift bed and was kneeling by the girl's side. From here he got a better idea of his surroundings. Nothing about this plane looked familiar and seemed old...very old from all the greenery. This wasn't his plane. Yet somehow he was here.

“Are you...are you alone here?” he asked her.

The girl looked up at him, wiping away the tears from her eyes. She didn't give any response to that. Rather, she got up and went to the back of the plane to gather a few items. When she returned she laid them on the floor in a semi circle. There was an old teddy bear, a makeshift doll with a coconut head, and then there was a wallet with a photo exposed. The photo seemed rather faded and he couldn't make much out of it other than a few human faces.

He sighed. “I see now.”

The girl really was alone...on this island...which he was also trapped in now…

They were both screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will involve our two characters learning more about each other. Stay tuned.


	3. Afternoon Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It looks like another character from TFA will be joining our story after all. ;)
> 
> Also, prepare for more crazy Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the love I am getting with this fic. You get a long chappie for a treat. :)

“So...uh...what's your name?”

The girl gave him a blank stare. Had she really no idea what he was talking about? He should count himself lucky that she spoke English.

Her face flinched. She was was trying…

“I...I can't...”

“You don't remember?”

Then her eyes widened in realization. She got up and went over to the far back of the plane that was packed to the brim with old chairs and luggage against a wall. She dug through it and came back with a pink plastic backpack to show to him. “Can you read that?”

She was pointing to the large three letter written in marker on the bag: R.E.Y.

“What's it say?”

They were clearly initials. And while his mind went through all the possible girl names that started with “R”, he knew none of it mattered. It almost made him sad to think that she had been here so long to have forgotten something so simple as her name.

“It says Rey, I think.”

“Really?” She started jumping up and down with excitement. “Is that really my name?”

“If you want it to be, I guess.”

“Yes! Yes!” She got down and leaned over at the teddy bear. “You hear that, Charlie? I'm Rey! My name is Reeeeey!”

She repeated the last phrase in sing-song, but the man wasn't smiling. He was disturbed, afraid to be stuck in the same space as someone who was now talking to inanimate objects. 

“Listen, Rey,” he said. “I need you to help me...”

“Nooo!” She got on all fours getting as close to the man's face as she possibly could. “You have to tell me your name now...”

“I'm...uh...”

“Did you forget, too?”

“No, I didn't forget! Just give me a second.”

He had gone by the name of Kylo Ren for so long. It wasn't exactly his birth name though, a name he wanted to put behind. But if he got rescued, her knowing him as “Kylo Ren” would compromise his personal life. But chances of him surviving this seem slimmed as it was. He'd be lucky if 'Rey' didn't end up being a cannibal who would eat him later.

“You can call me Ben,” he finally said.

“Ben? I think...I knew a Ben.”

“Good,” he said. “Then it should be easy for you. Now, can you help...” 

“The sun!” Rey was pointing to the wall where a long black line had been hand painted there. The sunlight seeping through one of the windows now aligned with the black mark. “It's almost time.” 

“Wait, what?” Before Ben could even comprehend, Rey was already out the plane door. “Where are you going?!”

She didn't respond. Ben tried to get up to go after her but he was still in no condition to really do much moving. Even trying to stand was pure pain. 

A few minutes later Rey returned with an array of fruit shells. “Sit down, Ben. Don't you want the others to help you?”

“Others?” Ben perked up. “There really are others?”

“They're right infront of you, stupid!”

Ben looked down and noticed the teddy bear and the coconut doll still sitting there. Rey was placing the fruit shells infront of them. “This one is Charlie,” she said sitting the teddy bear up. “And this one is Coco.” She batted the half-open coconut shell away from the doll. “Coco! That one's not for you! You're not a canon-ball!”

Ben was quietly praying now...praying for this lack of sanity from this girl to end...praying for all of this to be a dream…

“Oh...we're missing someone,” There was a moment of silence and then Rey lifted up her head. “I'll get it!”

“Get what?” 

Rey ignored him. She went to open the plane door on the other side. “Oh there you are, BB-8! You're just in time for afternoon tea. How was your night watching?”

Ben couldn't see who Rey was talking to but she was clearly bent over picking up something. “Well, you didn't do a very good job. There was a big yellow fire in the sky! How could you miss something like that?!”

She now came back over with another makeshift doll...one large round melon with a smaller melon for the head and two uneven-shaped rocks for eyes. It was shaped like a snowman with only a large stick keeping the two spheres together.

The BB-8 thingy was now part of their “circle”.

“Everybody, this is Ben. Say hi to Ben, everyone.”

 _'Get me out of here,'_ Ben thought to himself. _'Please god, get me off this forsaken island!'_

His pleas were disrupted by a sudden hit to the arm. “Don't be rude, Ben! Say hi to everyone.”

“Hi…,” he grumbled looking away from the three objects. Then he added “...everyone...” just to be a smartass.

But it got Rey to laugh. “You're funny, Ben. I think they're starting to like you, especially Coco.”

For the next several minutes, Ben was forced to participate in this disturbing sense of a tea party. At least Rey had given him a coconut shell with actual water in it, so he finally had something decent to eat. 

If this had been a small child with a standard tea party set that he was looking after, he wouldn't have mind it so much.

“Rey, how old are you?”

“What?”

“I asked for your age,” he said. “How old are you?”

“I...I don't know, okay?”

“Well, what's the last age you remember being?”

Rey held out her hand and for the longest time she was counting her fingers, or at least trying. In reality, all she could do was open and close her hand. And then she showed Ben one whole hand.

“Five? You've been here since you were five?”

Rey went unusually silent then. 

“Then you don't remember when you got here?”

She reached behind her and picked up a slip of paper from the floor and gave it to Ben. The small paper had yellowed with age. But Ben could recognize from the paper and the typing that it was a very old and worn out plane ticket. Much of the text was smeared away likely by Rey's fingerprints. It didn't matter, because Ben was only concerned about the ticket date.

**06 – 15 – 02**

Doing the math in his head, it came to about fourteen years. Fourteen years since Rey had been on this island and seemingly alone. No wonder she seemed unhinged. 

“How old am I, Ben?” she asked him. 

“You'd be 19, I think.”

“That sounds very old.”

“Not really,” said Ben. “I'm 29.”

“You look like an old man.”

Ben frowned. “I don't have any gray hairs, Rey.”

Rey looked over at her inanimate friends. “Well good news! The group has decided. And they have decided...to help you.”

“Okay…,” said Ben trying not to cringe.

“Now, what are we helping you with?”

“Well, I need to check out the island, see if any wreckage from my plane made it here. Then I need to find a way to reach help.”

“Help?”

“Yes, help to get off the island. Plus there might be other survivors.”

Rey seemed rather apprehensive. “Other people? On the island?”

“Well maybe,” said Ben. “Don't you want to see? Plus, if we get out of here, we can take you with us.”

“You mean leave the island?!”

This girl was asking too many questions and it was getting on his nerves. “Yes! Isn't that what you want?”

She wasn't responding to that. Ben sighed. “Look, I get it. You've been here for a really long time. I guess it will take some getting use to. You might have family that will want to see you again too. So can you please help me, Rey? I bet you know this island better than anyone.”

“I know it better than BB-8,” she said confidently.

“Well good. Cause I could use a guide.”

Rey grabbed the pink backpack. “Go outside while I pack.”

“Uh...okay.” Ben reluctantly got up and limped his way out of the plane. Rey had never really packed a bag before. She didn't know what to take other than clothes she knew wouldn't fit. But who knew how long her trip would last. She grabbed the wallet that was on the floor and gather a few of her 'reading materials'.

“Okay, Charlie...Coco. You're in charge while I'm gone. BB-8 is coming with me.”

The objects gave their silent approval.

“Because you've been around the island as much as I have, BB-8. What? You don't like Ben?! Well don't tell him that to his face!”

______________________________________________ 

Ben's back was getting better as they started traveling along the beach, with Rey pointing out all the places where she would fish or find random objects on the ground. She had been most proud of the time when she though she found a glass genie lamp that ended spraying funny stuff in her face instead. Ben could only assume it was probably a bottle of perfume.

He stayed behind her the entire time, because every time Rey turned to face him, the shirt she was wearing was showing too much cleavage and that wasn't just an understatement. It was lazily buttoned and one breast was practically dangling out the entire time.

“Uh, Rey...your shirt...”

She looked down. “What about it? Do you like it?”

“I...” He wasn't going to get through to her. Not unless he wanted to explain why it was improper to be showing like that. “Never mind, it's fine.”

They stopped when Rey spotted something on a hill. She put BB-8 down and pointed at the direction of a mysterious black object. “Dibs!”

Then she ran up to it with Ben following when he realized what the object was. “It's my luggage,” he said. At least part of it.”

Rey had gotten to the black bag first and was quickly rummaging through all the funny objects inside. “This isn't a genie lamp, is it?”

“No, that's my cologne.” Ben tossed the cologne aside. This was the bag with his personal things so all he could find of any use was some soap and towels. He was wishing to find his phone or his laptop instead. Even if they were broken, he could work the devices to find someway to contact help.

Suddenly he heard Rey scream. She was holding his battery powered shaver and she fell backwards as it came on. “It's a creature!”

“No, Rey!”

“Get back!” Rey dropped the shaver into the sand where it was still somewhat moving and making noise. Then she tried to stab at it with her staff.

“Rey stop!”

But she was still freaking out. “Ben, don't! It could be poisonous!”

“It's not, just watch!” Rey closed her eyes as Ben picked up the shaver with his bare hand. The whirring noise stopped.

Rey couldn't bear to look. “Did you kill it?”

“It was never alive to begin with.” But all Ben could think of now was that Rey had broken his shaver when she poked her staff with it, and now he was going to grow a sweaty beard. He was already sweaty and sticky from the humid weather.

“Whats wrong Ben?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I'm just hot and tired...and I still have blood on me.”

“We can go to the pool.”

“What pool?”

Rey picked up BB-8 and they went into the trees. Not too far away, there was a nice watering hole surrounded by bush. It was a welcome sight to Ben who grabbed a handful of water to drink. It wasn't the best tasting, but this was what Rey probably lived on. 

“I'm gonna need ten minutes,” said Ben. He feared that Rey wouldn't understand his need for privacy but luckily she didn't follow him past the bushes and into the water.

Rey was waiting outside with BB-8 until curiosity got the best of her. She quietly pushed aside a bit of green and nearly let out an “ooo” at what she saw.

Ben no longer had his clothes on. He was standing there...the water not even reaching his knees. The blood was gone from his face. When she first saw him on the beach, Rey believed at first that he was an alien in his black clothing. But now she could see how pale his skin was, much paler than hers and there was so much detail to it, many edges compared to her few smooth curves.

Her eyes were trailing down to the little thing dangling between Ben's legs.

She turned back to BB-8 who was sitting there almost staring at Rey with disapproval. “No, I'm not being a perv,” she whispered. “That's a naughty word, BB-8.”

Rey thought to herself that it was no different than what she saw in that book where everybody was naked. She was reluctant to ask Ben if she would read it to her because she had no idea what was going on in that book.

She snuck away from the bush before Ben could turn to grab his clothes.

“You're not gonna tell him anything, are you?”

BB-8 could only rock slightly side to side thanks to coming breeze.

“Good.”


	4. Jungle Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had an insane blast writing this chapter. It's all the "Ben and Rey get at each other's throats" moments that you've been waiting for, plus Rey has a dark secret.

Ben didn't realize how massive the island truly was. Every mile they traveled along the beach seemed similar to the miles they had already covered.

The only difference was the occasional bits of useless debris and creatures that would come out onto the beach. Aside from the typical crabs and seagulls, there were also some large unusual looking bugs. 

Rey dropped on all fours infront of Ben's foot just as he was about to step on one, resembling a giant brown cricket. She couldn't possibly be doing it out of compassion, he thought. But Rey picked up the insect and instead of letting it go...she took a huge bite out of it.

Ben could hear every disgusting grind of the bite.

“Crunchy.” 

She was smiling. Christ, she actually developed a taste for it. And now she was waving the half-eaten bug infront of Ben's face. He knew what she was doing. “I'm not eating that.”

“It's delicious.”

“I'm sure it is.” Ben was clearly being sarcastic. “Still not eating it.”

And with that, Rey would consume the rest of the bug, even licking her fingers afterward. Ben was desperately trying not to vomit. 

She noticed the sky was changing. “Are we going back now?”

“Going back where?”

“To the plane.”

“No, Rey...we have to search the entire island. I'm not turning back now.”

“But it's gonna be dark soon.”

“You have a point,” said Ben. “We should get started.” Rey watched him go into the woods and followed, believing that they were heading back to the plane. Instead, Ben would stop a few feet, pick up a large piece of wood, and drag it back to the beach.

“What are you doing?” Rey asked as the woodpile started getting bigger.

“What does it look like I'm doing? I'm making a signal fire so that the ships and planes can spot it tonight.”

Something was setting off in Rey. Panic? Terror? Whatever it was it propelled her towards the wood pile pushing it down and then to try and kick the collapsed pieces away. “WHAT THE HELL, REY?!” Ben grabbed her by the arms, stopping her from doing anymore damage.

“You can't…,” she said. “You'll wake up the jungle monster!”

“What? Are you kidding me?!” Ben shook his head. “No...don't be ridiculous.”

“We have to go back to the plane!”

“We're not turning back now, Rey. Your jungle monster is probably just some bear or wild cat.”

“There IS a jungle monster!”

“Have you ever seen it?”

“...no...”

“Then how do you know it even exists?”

“I hear it eat.” 

Ben was always a skeptic. He knew that tales of fantastic creatures and monsters were just that...even in the remote parts of the world like this island. Sure the bugs were huge, but that he could dismiss as just evolution.

If this was Rey's idea of trying to get him to go back to the plane, he wasn't finding it funny.

“You hear all kinds of things, Rey. Your mind has already messed you up enough.”

She took offense to that. “Hey! I'm not crazy!”

Ben let out a massive sarcastic laugh that echoed all around them. “Yes, the bug-eating castaway who talks to fruit is TRULY the voice of sanity here!”

Rey couldn't find anything to refute that. Instead, she stormed over to where BB-8 sat and picked him up. “BB-8 and I are going home. You can stay here and let the jungle monster grind you into a soup!” She could hear Ben continue to laugh as she made her way through the trees. 

She didn't know her numbers very well and had no clue how far she traveled. All she knew was that it was already too dark to make getting to the plane very difficult. It wasn't that she was lost. It was that she feared they were in dangerous territory. There were parts of the island Rey didn't want to be anywhere near if she could help it, and Ben seemed determined to drag her through every inch of this place just to find whatever it was he was looking for.

Exhaustion overtook her as she settled herself and BB-8 against a large tree. She gripped her staff tightly as the first sounds of the night began. She learned to recognize almost every single one during her time here. So far so good. 

She looked behind the tree and could see a light coming from the direction of the beach. She hadn't walked that far away from Ben as she thought she did, and the stupid man still made his stupid signal fire. A lot of good it would do him.

She thought she heard a growl coming from the forest again and her heart started racing. Then it stopped. Perhaps it was her stomach. She stayed in ready position for another hour or so. If she was lucky, maybe she'll get to sleep. It wouldn't be like it was back when she was a small child, crying all night from fear and loneliness.

The growling never got closer but there was a brief rustling and then silence. A few seconds later, the jungle resumed its night noise again. 

“No, BB-8. We're not going back to the plane. We'll stay here tonight.”

She thought BB-8 was asking her why, or maybe she was asking herself that.

“Cause maybe the monster will find Ben first and not us.” She wasn't sure if that was even a reason. Having enough of BB-8, Rey turned the melon so that it's back was facing her. “I'm going to need some alone time, okay,” she said as she opened her pink backpack.

Ben was sitting by the signal fire keeping warm and hoping...praying...to spot a ship, a light, anything. A search party had to be looking for him. He was too well known, too valuable to certain people. They would have spared no expense. They couldn't think him dead, especially not his employer. He wouldn't have minded being found by his family of all people.

He couldn't fall asleep or otherwise he might miss something. Instead, he tried to keep awake using the sounds of the jungle behind him as a distraction. Nothing but chirps and wind-blowing, but one sound seemed rather off and he focused on that. It sounded like gasping.

Only a human could make a noise like that.

“Rey?” Ben got up and leaned into the very edge of the forest. “Rey?” he whispered towards the dark.

He could still hear the strange gasps and moans. They were very distant. There had to be all kinds of animals making a raucous tonight for a variety of reasons. Rey was probably halfway back to her plane by now. It seemed useless to call her and his eyes were getting heavy from staring into the darkness as it was…

Something was poking him.

He tried to ignore it but then a sharp point landed right in the gut.

“AH!!!” 

Ben opened his eyes to bright light and the sounds of the crashing waves. He was lying on the sand, rather sore.

“Dammit!” He said, realizing he had fallen asleep. A wooden stick with a sharp pointy blade was just inches above him. The stick soon disappeared and the vision was something else. Two strange objects...no...they were breasts and he realized that it was Rey looking down on him. Her shirt was now buttoned only below the chest, making the rest of her topless. She's probably never worn a bra before.

“Not dead?” she asked him.

He dropped his head back and sighed. He kept his eyes closed to keep himself from looking at her indecency. “No.”

“Monster didn't eat you?”

“Obviously not!” he said getting very annoyed. But at least this made him right about the jungle monster's existence. “I thought you went home.”

“Too far away,” said Rey. “Want some breakfast?”

Ben finally got up, sickened by the thought of a meal of bugs and mangoes even though he was starting to starve a bit. “No, forget it. I'm going. Are you still coming or what?”

He was trying...god was he trying.

But the day was becoming long, hot, and strenuous. His hunger wasn't helping matters.

_'Coconut island...coconut tree…  
coconut island...1, 2, 3…'_

Rey was singing those words over and over. It wasn't that she had a bad voice, far from it. But it was the same words that she clearly had to have made up. His mind was already going crazy from wanting to cover up her upper half. 

“Rey, could you…” Ben sighed knowing that he was about to use a word that he rarely, if ever, used. “...please...think of another song to sing?”

“That's all I know.”

Of course it would be.

“Do you know any songs, Ben?”

“Yes,” he said. He was hoping that she wouldn't push him to think of another song to sing. But then he stopped. “Do you see that?” Ben pointed to a something shining, glistening at the top of a lone palm tree just ahead of them. 

He ran as fast as he could towards the tree. He could barely see it, but he was certain from it being the only all black object that stood out. "Rey, it's my phone!” 

He tried to climb the tree, but it was settled on a rocky mound. He wasn't a very good climber and the rocks only made his situation more difficult. Rey walked past him and with one bare foot on the rocks, she was managing herself up the tree with ease. 

“Do you see it?”

She got to the top and found a funny looking device wedged in the coconuts that left her absolutely baffled. “This isn't a phone! Where are the numbers?!” All Rey could see was a strange video screen but no numbers. She was getting very frustrated trying to figure out the secret of the so-called phone, pressing every button on the sides that she could find.

Ben seemed confident that even if the battery was dead, he could find a way to not only recharge it, but also make a satellite with just a few items on the beach, but Rey was still up in the tree playing with his smartphone. He had to pray that she didn't break it beyond repair.

“Bring it down, Rey.”

“Stupid thing,” she said as she angrily chucked the object in the direction of the ocean. 

She realized too late her mistake just before Ben screamed.

“WHY DID YOU…?!" And now he was trying to pull out his hair, completely at a loss for words. "That was our only way off the island!!!”

Rey could see how furious he was from the top of the tree and became legitimately scared. “I'm...I'm sorry...”

“Come down here!”

“So you can hit me? No way!”

“Dammit, Rey! This is your fault!”

“Come and get me then!”

Ben knew he couldn't. Despite his good physical build, he was no match for Rey's years of experience. He tried picking up Rey's staff to poke at the tree but it couldn't reach very far. So, he threw down the staff, then dropped to his knees in frustration and then he started laughing...laughing like an insane maniac. Even Rey was disturbed. “What's so funny?!”

“I'm gonna die here,” Ben said to himself. “I'm gonna die here on Crazy Island! That's what funny, Rey! THAT'S WHAT'S SO FUCKING FUNNY!!!”

In any other circumstance she would be busy pondering what that strange word Ben said before “funny” meant. But Ben's demeanor had change in a way that made her feel very uncomfortable. “Ben, you're scaring me.”

“Good! You know what else I'm gonna do?” He went over to where BB-8 had been sitting in the sand. “I'm gonna throw your stupid melon man into the ocean just like you did my phone!”

“NO! PLEASE! I'LL COME DOWN!” Rey held back tears as she hurried down the tree. She ignored the tall furious man as she ran past him to pick up BB-8. “Are you okay?” she clearly asked BB-8. 

Ben seemed to by hyperventilating, something he often did to control his anger. This was madness. And Rey was hugging BB-8 in a way where the head was nestled up right inbetween her breasts. Everything was driving him insane now. “You care more about that thing than you do about leaving the island?” He was now grinding his teeth in an attempt to be abnormally calm. “Fine. If that's how it is, then I'll find my own way out! I'm gonna build a raft to get out of here and you're not coming with me!”

“Well good!” Rey yelled at him. “I don't wanna be on a raft with you and neither does BB-8!”

“I'd rather get eaten by your imaginary monster than spend one more day with you and your imaginary friends!”

Rey ignored him. She went back to pick up her staff and then she, along with BB-8, began walking away from Ben. “And put a goddamn shirt on!” He yelled. “You look like a whore!”

She stopped and turned around. “I don't know what that is, but when I find out, you'll be sorry!”

______________________________________________ 

The sun was at its peak as Ben spent the better part of the afternoon dragging wood after wood from the forest as he laid out the groundwork for what would be a raft. Thank god, he had some experience in construction. It didn't matter if he was hungry, or that his black clothes were soaking him with sweat. He was going to get off this fucking island one way or another.

“Are you done yet?”

Ben looked up and saw Rey looking at him curiously. He was stupid to think she would just leave after their fight a few hours ago.

“Rey, this is going to take some time.”

“How much time?”

“Days, weeks, if I'm lucky. I'll go faster if you go away.”

Rey thought about it for a second and started to turn away.

At that moment, Ben collapsed.

“Ben?”

Rey quickly ran back to Ben who was now lying on the ground. “I'm fine, Rey,” he groaned. “I'm just tired.”

“You're...”

“Just go, Rey! Leave me alone!”

She took the hint this time, still mad as hell with him. Going back to the plane now seemed like a serious decision more than ever. But as Rey took one last look at Ben, she saw how he couldn't even get up under his own power and the sun was taking a toll on both of them.

Ben continued to lie there in the sand. _'Why won't I die already?'_

Suddenly he felt a tug at the back of his hair.

“Drink.”

He opened his eyes and was staring down into a half coconut shell filled with water being held by Rey. Natural instinct kicked in and Ben devoured the water within seconds.

Rey dropped his head in the sand again. He still didn't have the strength to move and now something was being laid on top of him. He couldn't care less at this point. 

Rey was placing three giant palm leaves on top of his body to keep him cool. When she was done with that, she grabbed the coconut shell and returned a few minutes later with two coconut shells filled with water.

Then she went into the jungle with her staff. By the time she came back to the beach, the sun was setting. Ben was no longer lying down, but instead just sitting and staring at the water, having given up on his raft.

Rey gathered some branches and started a small fire next to Ben by using rocks to spark a flame. Then she pulled out her staff. Tied to one end was a giant rodent that she had caught in the forest. She took the blade off her staff and began to skin the creature.

Ben would have been easily disgusted but his mind was too broken now to even care.

The creature had been skinned and roasted over a fire. Now it stuck on a stick. 

“Eat?”

He ignored her.

“You don't like it?” Rey asked him.

Ben looked at the meat on the stick. It was clearly a large cooked rat by the shape of it, even the tail was distinguishable.

“They're...they're not very good,” she said honestly. “Sometimes I pretend it's chicken or a barbecue. And on Thankskivey, it's a turkey. But I don't know when that is, so it's less a turkey.”

Ben's silence was making Rey nervous again. But this time, he took the meat stick from Rey's hand and took one slow cautious bite of the rat's head. They were both surprised when Ben swallowed.

“It's okay,” he told her. 

While he finished the entire thing, Rey was busily preparing a pile of sand into a form of a pillow. 

“Is that for you?” Ben asked her while licking the stick.

“It's for you. I'm gonna sleep in the trees tonight.”

“That doesn't sound safe. What happened to your jungle monster?”

“You're probably right,” she told him. “Can't be real. Good night.”

After Rey went off, Ben looked over and realized that she had forgotten BB-8. She probably left BB-8 there to watch him but it was an assuring sign that he would see her again in the morning. 

Rey found a dark grassy area covered by trees. She closed her eyes hearing only the chirping of crickets.

She proceeded to take off all her clothes and embrace the cool breeze of the night. 

Her pink backpack was the only thing she brought with her and out of it, she pulled out the picture book that had given her the most intrigue. She found it in some locked luggage when she was still very young and was disgusted yet confused as to why everyone in the book was naked. She had forgotten about that book for a long time until her body began to take the odd shape of the women just like in the pictures. 

She noticed how the men and the women were touching themselves...and each other. Rey didn't know what had compelled her to do it but she began to copy the pictures. That was when she discovered parts of her that she never knew existed, both mentally and physically. In her mind, she called the place she found inbetween her legs a 'hidden pocket'. It was an uncomfortable, yet fascinating, moment when she discovered that her fingers could fit inside there with some push. The women in the pictures had 'hidden pockets' too and the men were putting their dangling things inside of them...just like the one Ben had.

How she wished that she could ask Ben about it...what the words in the book meant. Why the men and the women seemed happy at the strange things they were doing to their bodies. But Ben already considered her crazy. How would he feel to know she was lying here naked, touching herself like the people in those pictures and her body feeling strangely good from it? Or how she sometimes liked to get her nipples hard so she could touch the very sensitive tips?

She thought of being like those women in the pictures...wanting to know what it was like to have a man's thing inside of her like that.

“Oh...Ben...”

Her eyes widened. Did she really just think of Ben like that?

She didn't realize that she was touching herself much harder, thrusting her fingers in herself more than she ever had before. Her back began to arch up. Her moans and gasps began to echo. She couldn't stop thinking of Ben...of how he looked yesterday when she spied on him.

BB-8 would be ashamed to see her like this.

A cry of “OH!” shook the jungle sending nearby birds flying up into the sky.

And now Rey was lying there, gasping for breath.

She had never felt so wet inbetween in her legs, not even the night before. All she could do was look up at the stars feeling dirty with herself, yet also feeling a sense of longing for something she knew she could never have.

Rey was a confused being. But at least there was no humans around to judge her...except for now Ben.

When her body finally calmed, Rey cleaned herself off and got dressed. This time, she tried to button her top correctly like Ben wanted, but it still wasn't covering much.

With every step back to the beach, she began to worry if Ben had heard her, all the naughty noises that she had been making.

Much to her relief, Ben was still fast asleep on her sand pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made that song up in my head and it seemed like the perfect torture device for Ben.
> 
> Poor Rey doesn't understand sex...or smartphones.
> 
> Don't expect future chaps to be this long. See you in a week. :)


	5. The Curse of the Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We had a bit of comedy last chap. How about some heavy and possibly dark stuff? Fun yes?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I surprise myself with these chap lengths.

_The little girl on the beach had only one job to do...to look for anything useful. The same job as the other survivors but she found more play in the task than work, chasing after whatever seagulls she came across, wanting to wet her feet with the incoming tide._

_When she near tripped on the object, she ran across the beach with excitement._

_“San Tekka! San Tekka!”_

_She brought the old man she believed to be her babysitter back to where she made her find._

_“Mr. San Tekka, I found something!”_

_She felt very proud of herself as she pulled out a black briefcase half-wedged in the sand._

_“Good work, child!” the old man cheered. “Pray that this will earn us quite a feast tonight.” He told the little girl to find a rock as the briefcase had a special lock on it and even instructed her on how to use the rock to break it._

_They both held their breath, and with the opening of the briefcase the smile of anticipation on San Tekka's face changed. The child wasn't paying attention. She was already ooh-ing and ah-ing at the things inside the case, pulling them out with innate curiosity._

_“Useless,” San Tekka grumbled. He was tossing most of the briefcase's contents out behind him. “Absolute junk. Absolute filth!”_

_The little girl had gotten hold of what she thought was a book and opened it in its center. “EWWW!!! They're all naked and doing funny things!”_

_“THROW THAT OUT!” San Tekka snatched the magazine from the child's hands. “That is a tool for wicked perverts!”_

_“What's a pervert?”_

_“Someone who likes to look at people's...indecency.” He tossed the book aside with all the other useless things. “Enough of this. We need to go collect fruit while there's still light.”_

_“Why we have to keep picking fruit for Unkar?” the child asked when they made their way into the jungle. “He's not the pilot.”_

_“It's not a matter of who flies the plane,” San Tekka explained. “He's asserted his power over the group. 'Survival of the fittest'. He will see one of these days that the meek WILL inherit the earth, mark my words.”_

_“Maybe we'll find mommy and daddy this time?”_

_The little girl requested that nearly every day since the crash. The old man must have explained it to her so many times how many from the plane never made it to shore from the sea and that's why there were so few bodies. Unless she saw her parents dead infront of her with her own eyes, she was going to remain a naive child who would not accept the full reality of their situation. She needed something, anything, to keep her going until they were rescued._

_But in the back of her mind, there was a small part of her...the growing part of her...that already knew the truth, a truth that was reflected in the remaining survivors who had long accepted their new world order._

_She really wanted something to eat but that stupid Unkar man wasn't going to let them. Not unless they collected his share first._

~*~

It took four...maybe five days total just to get halfway around the island? Ben didn't know. The island was taking a hold on his ability to track time. How long would it be before he would forget almost everything about himself? How soon would it be before he becomes like Rey?

With each day that passed the liklihood of getting rescued was decreasing. Ben and Rey left many large X's and signal fires along the beach but nothing came from it. They could stare at the sea and sky for hours and find no change. 

Between that and the debris from his plane that he would fine, Ben was feeling hopeless. For Rey, the debris was like finding a new scientific discovery. She would pick up every piece of insignificant burnt metal that she could find and ask Ben what it was. But all he could do was shrug and say it was part of the plane.

“What year is it out there?” she then asked him.

“It's 2017.”

An idea was springing in her head. “Wait, does that mean you're from the future?”

“No, Rey. I'm from the present. It's 2017 on the island, too.”

“Oh.” 

And then they would go silent again. The questions annoyed Ben at first, but the silence became more disturbing. He needed distractions from his own thoughts and didn't have a lot of options here are far as conversation. He had to make do with what was available.

“What time?”

Ben assumed she meant month. “Uh...February.” He admit he wasn't even sure it was still.

“I think I remember. The one with that day...that Fally, Valley…?”

“Valentine's Day?”

“Yes! That day you get chock-lick and candy in a heart! Do you get a heart, Ben?”

He was wondering if she meant that literally or metaphorically. “Not much anymore. The day loses its muster when you get older.” 

“I remember...it tasted very sweet.”

The past several days of eating fruit and rats didn't made Ben feel like he took his pre-crash life for granted. What pained him though, was that Rey had some memory of that life, some glimpse of a past life that was too far from her reach. Then he thought about how Rey would be consuming her weight in chocolate if they ever got off the island (avoiding the ones with coconut as she would never want to taste another coconut again) and somehow that made him feel a bit better.

The beach was starting to run out in findings and necessities. If they were to find anything of good use, they would need to go further inward. Luckily, Rey knew all the plants and the creatures. She knew which ones were trustworthy, which ones were poisonous, and more importantly, which ones were edible. 

“Ben, look!” Rey leapt over a fallen tree to get to a strange red box in the bush. This was the biggest discovery yet in her opinion. It was far too small to be luggage and their was a symbol on it, a plus sign, she thought. “What's it say?”

“It just says 'First Aid'”.

“Is that good? We'll we need it?”

Probably not Rey, considering that she managed to survive on the island for this long. “Doesn't hurt to have it.” Ben had a backpack with him that he managed to find early in the trip, but it was already too full with other stuff he had collected. “Got any room left in your bag?”

“Let's see,” she said as she took out her pink backpack. She was careless, and the contents spilled over upon opening. But she didn't seem to care since she was trying to get the kit in.

Ben thought he was being nice helping her retrieve the things that fell out: a plastic canteen, a rugged old towel, some rocks, a small atlas book, and a large hardcover book about animals. 

When he picked up the animal book, however, something else dropped out of it.

“No, don't!” Rey cried.

But it was too late, and Ben had to do a double-take at what he was picking up from the ground. “Rey...what's this?” He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Just what in the world?

What the hell was Rey doing with an old porno magazine?

There was no answer, only the action of Rey quickly grabbing it away from him. “It's mine!” She tried hiding it behind her back but the color of her face was already showing fear and embarrassment.

Ben didn't know what to say. Like hell, was this fucking awkward. He thought he knew all of Rey's unusual behaviors, but this one was the oddest by far. Everything else about her seemed so innocent and childlike, and then this just came out of nowhere. 

“Rey...”

She stepped back as he approached. “Just leave me alone!” 

He knew she was going to dart but he wasn't quick enough to stop her. She had already dashed like a deer out of sight of him. “Rey, come back!” he called out, but Ben knew he wouldn't be able to follow her into the unknown.

Rey ran until she found herself on the beach again. She looked up and noticed the moon in the sky.

It was almost full.

_'Oh no,'_ she thought.

It was almost time again.

~*~

_“Wake up,” San Tekka whispered._

_He managed to finally nudged the little girl from her sleep and she looked up at him confused. “Is it work-time already?”_

_“No.”_

_“Then why...”_

_“Shh!” San Tekka looked around. It was still very dark. It didn't make sense for either of them to be awake. “Do you want to get out of here? Do you want to stop getting food for Unkar?”_

_The little girl nodded without hesitation._

_“We can get to the other side of the island...too far for anyone else to reach. But we have to leave now and we have to be very quiet, do you understand?”_

_He held the child by the hand and they walked past a camp that resembled the aftermath of a messy party. The fat bastard of a “leader” was asleep on his back. They could smell the alcohol from his snores as they crept past. His loyal slave-drivers were just as drunk and asleep as Unkar was._

_The only people she couldn't see were the others, the eldery and weak men, women, and children that Unkar would make get food for him and his men. She called them the skinny people, because like her and San Tekka, they were forbidden to eat as much as Unkar and his men were, despite how much there was on the island. The men would beat anyone they caught eating with their permission. They had hit her once for trying to hide a jungle nut in her mouth._

_She knew with each day they were forced to work, the skinny people would get skinnier and then they would just disappear. It made her wish for the earlier days when there were more of them, when they were all working together and still had hope in being rescued._

~*~

Ben never moved from that spot since Rey ran off. She had left BB-8 behind and his mind, that was a good sign that she would come back. She would never left him behind.

He must have fallen asleep because he heard her voice whispering for him before he looked up and saw her. It was now night but her presence had now become a sight for sore eyes. “Oh thank god.”

She looked at him nervously. “I have to go.”

“What?”

“I have to go, okay?”

“Go...go where?”

She held BB-8 tightly in her arms, finding it hard to explain. “To another part of the island.”

Rey was still being mysterious but whatever she was up to, Ben decided he'd go with the flow. “Alright, just gimme a second...”

“No! You can't come with me!”

“What do you mean I can't come with you? Rey, if this is about the magazine, we can talk about it...”

“I can't talk about THIS. Not with you!”

“Please, Rey!” He grabbed her by the arm and was determined to keep her from leaving. The look in Rey's hazel eyes was one of fear and sadness, as if she was about to face death.

Even more terrifying was the sad smile she gave him. “I've made it back before. It might be okay this time.”

MIGHT? The word only caused him to lose his grip and she took advantage of it. Once more, she was disappearing on him with blink of an eye. And the darkness made it hard to see which direction she was going. 

“REY!!!!!!!!!”

She had taken BB-8 with her this time, and that only made his heart and his feet move faster in pursuit.

~*~

_“I'm tired, San Tekka.”_

_“I know,” he whispered. “We'll rest plenty enough when we get there. Keep your feet moving and stay close.” The jungle was unusually dark and quiet. They were trekking blind constantly tripping on unknown things, hopefully just plants. The little girl caught sight of a small light to her left and tugged at San Tekka._

_“Is that them? Is that the island people?”_

_“Yes,” San Tekka said. “But we must stay away.”_

_“But I wanna see them...”_

_“No, child. Our people have already caused enough trouble with them and now they're paying for it.”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“Do you remember early on, when one man in the group had that terrible cough? He went into the jungle to meet the island people and got them all very sick. They don't have immunity against disease like we do. They're dieing. We did that to them, I'm afraid.”_

_The little girl's questions went on and on. Don't they have a doctor? Could they help them? How could a cough make them die? San Tekka was eventually able to hush her. “That is why we must stay away from their home,” he said. “You never know what the dead leave behind for us as punishment.”_

~*~

The sun had up and gone in a day. Ben knew he was running all over the island with little direction. He had no tracking skills, and it made him regret not joining his family more on their past camping trips.

Sometime the next afternoon, he did find some bare footprints in the mud. The trail was short, but it gave him a way to go. He would take his chances on the jungle nuts and bananas for substance, but he was not going to give up on finding Rey.

The sky had changed to a dull gray and the air was thick and hazy. But he got to an area where the trees began to thin, and thought he was dreaming when he saw a familiar melon sitting on a rock in the meadow. As he got closer, Ben never felt so relieved.

“To think I'm actually glad to see you.” Was he really talking to BB-8 as if he was real? His thoughts were broken by the sound of moaning. “Rey?!”

Ben listened again. The moan continued and it was slowly turning into a cry of pain.

“Rey, I'm coming! Hang on!” The cries were getting louder as he ran. He would stop to listen and get an idea where to go.

And then he heard a crunch.

His foot stepped on something fragile, that broke underneath like glass. He found himself looking down at fragments...bone fragments. He stepped back realizing that he'd just stepped on a human skull only for his other foot to step on another one. The ground around him had become littered with human bones.

This time he looked up and came face to face with a large stone, the dents forming the shape of a human face.

He rounded the corner of the statue and found Rey, crouching down in horrible pain arms around her abdomen. Across from her was another larger human-like statue.

“Rey!”

She was horrified to see him there. “Ben?! Don't come any closer!”

“Rey, are you hurt?!”

“Please just go. They'll curse you too.”

She had to be kidding, right? First it was jungle monsters, and now curses? “Can you move?”

“If I move, I'll die.”

There was no telling or trusting if she was over-exaggerating. “Rey, I'm coming over there.”

“No...” she pleaded. But the pain was keeping her from making her case and Ben walked through the tall grass to get to her. “He told me not to come here. I just wanted to see...”

Ben didn't know what Rey was even talking about anymore, or who 'he' was. “Where is it?” He was asking about where she was injured, but she wouldn't say. “Fine. I'm going to carefully pick you up...” He stopped when he was looking down and saw that Rey was not wearing any clothing below the waist. “Rey, why…?”

Then he saw the red liquid streaming down her thighs.

“I came here and fell asleep and when I woke up, I started bleeding from my pocket! If I come here every moon, it'll go away. We killed them, Ben. We killed them and now they're punishing me!”

Holy shit. He didn't even know how to handle this. It more uncomfortable than absurd. But Rey was crying. She never knew. This was the only conclusion she could come to for this to be happening ever since it began for her. 

“Listen to me, Rey,” he said, remaining calm as possible. “You come with me and I promise you're going to be okay.”

“No...I can't leave till it stops.”

Only now did Ben hear the thunder but the rain was quickly coming down. “We gotta go!”

“I'll die!”

“You'll die out here!” Ben cried. The rain was getting much worse. He had enough. He scooped Rey up in his arms. It didn't matter that she was half-naked or that she was screaming in protest. He was just lucky to find a cave eventually. 

The rain had washed off some of the blood but it came back once Rey was inside the cave. She really believed she was going to die now that she was no longer in the temple. She was still in terrible pain.

Ben went through his bag. The first aid kit ended up in his possession and he was digging through it till he found a bottle. “Yes,” he said. He took a pill out from the bottle and put it in Rey's hand. “Put that in your mouth.”

She did but she was hesitant. Then Ben handed her a water bottle and told her to take a drink. The pill went down. 

“You should take off the shirt.”

“You...you told me to put a shirt on,” Rey told him, remembering their row from days earlier.

“It's soaked. You'll get sick.” Ben rummaged through his bag again and felt like an idiot for having no actual clothes. All he had was a slightly damped beach towel. His bag wasn't exactly waterproof. But he gave it to her anyway. It just barely covered her.

He left the cave assuring Rey he'd be back. He managed to find Rey's bag but he also brought something else...even she was surprised.

“You went back for BB-8?”

“He probably would hate me if I didn't,” said Ben. He placed BB-8 by her side but he hadn't expected for BB-8's head to suddenly fall off and roll away. It was clear the body had been rotting and the rain only sped up the process. “Shit.”

“It's okay,” Rey assured him. “I've been meaning to get a new head anyway.”

Now that she seemed calm, Ben would explain to Rey that her bleeding was not the result of an island curse. He just wasn't going to give too much detail about it. 

“You mean, all women have it?” she asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Then why have I never known it before?”

“It's not something you're supposed to know about as a kid. It's more something your parents are supposed to tell you.”

There was a long silence after that. 

“You know alot, Ben.”

“I don't know how to hunt...or climb trees like you,” he told her. “Anyway, how are you feeling, now?”

“Sleepy.”

“Good, that means the medicine's working.”

By the time the rain finally stopped, Rey was fast asleep. Ben felt uncomfortable with the fact that she was still bleeding but he knew it would be gone in another day or two. They would remain in the cave until then.


	6. Bath Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has many questions for Ben. Pray for Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There isn't much to this chap (and a bit short) but that's cause I didn't want to overload the next chap where a lot more shit is due to happen.
> 
> In the meantime, I hope this will tide you over.

For a moment, Rey had almost forgotten how she came to be in the cave wearing only a beach towel. She had been known to pass out at times from the pain that came with her moon-time bleeding. But this time Ben had been there with some medicine. To her surprise, the pain in her abdomen was gone, replaced instead with a numbness. She wasn't bleeding so much anymore either. She had to keep faith in what Ben told her...that it wasn't some divine island curse. Still, nothing felt normal about this. But she had to trust him. He was from civilization after all.

Ben wasn't in the cave when she woke up, but he did leave behind a water bottle and a few bananas, which Rey didn't hesitate to scarf down. Poor BB-8 was still headless. They would have to remedy that by finding a new melon. She crawled out of the cave. Her thighs still sticky with blood, Rey thought it best to clean herself up. 

There was a pool near the temple that she believed the island people used, for what purposes she was better off not knowing. But she liked the stones and decaying ruins that surrounded the pools. There were more human-like statues and hand paintings that seem to bore an eery similarity to the naked people from her book, except in much cruder form. The women in the statues were portrayed with enormous breasts, which only made Rey feel insecure about her own (and make her feel less normal than she already was). The men still had their things in-between their legs, but they stuck out more and were much larger as if a caricature of the human man.

She took off the beach towel and dipped her toes into the water. She had been weary of water when she first landed on the island, and it took some time for her to learn how to swim. Things were different now and she liked going under water and seeing what lied underneath. She would submerge her entire body into the pool as she always did, to feel clean from head to toe.

Just nearby, Ben was hanging up Rey's clothes to dry from the rainstorm the night before. He never changed out of his clothes and it was a miracle he didn't get sick. But this time he would take everything off and go clean himself up best he could. He hung his clothes to dry along with Rey's and found the pool near the temple. Seeing all the statues and paintings just made Ben more uneasy about the island. Whoever lived on this island before were really into the sex imagery.

Ben was a tall man for the pool. The water barely covered his waist as he got in.

From the other side, Rey quickly emerged. They both screamed at the sudden sight of each other. Out of instinct, Ben's hands quickly went to his junk. “Rey, what are you doing here?!”

“I'm just washing up.”

“That's what I'm doing!”

“Then what's the problem?”

“What's the problem?!” Did this girl not know boundaries? “We can't be in here at the same time like this. One of us has to get out!”

“I can't get out. I don't know where my clothes are.”

“I'm drying them over there.” Ben pointed away from the pool. “Fine, I'll get out.” 

Rey could help but look at Ben as he proceeded to climb out of the pool...the way his muscles flexed and curve. Her heart skipped a beat when she got a glance at his ass.

Ben quickly paused and turned to face Rey. She tried to look another way when he saw her, but it was too late. He had a feeling that she was watching him with a bit too much interest. “Maybe you should turn around,” he said.

But Rey wasn't responding. Her face was turning red. “Do you...do you think I'm a pervert, Ben?”

Ben stopped. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I...saw you washing yourself before. I couldn't stop looking. I can't stop looking now. That picture book, I liked it. I dunno why but I like it.” She started to shake her head. Her eyes were starting to water. “I'm confused. I dunno what's wrong with me, Ben. I'm sorry!” 

Instead of getting out like he planned, Ben found himself getting back into the pool and walking over to her. “Rey, nothing is wrong with you...”

“Yes, there is, Ben. I'm a pervert and I don't even have big breasts! I'm a freak! Nothing is normal about me…!”

“Rey, calm down! First of all, you're not a pervert. And second you don't need...the other thing.”

“You're...you're not mad at me for watching you?”

“No, I get it,” said Ben. “It's okay, Rey.” Ben was unaware that he had his hands on Rey's shoulders the whole time. His eyes kept wandering down to her breasts ever since she made the comment about not having big ones. All that was going through his head was why did she even need them when she was fine just the way she was...looking the way she was all wet and…

Rey's face started to change when she looked down: to one of surprise. “Ben, your...”

He looked at where Rey was pointing. The pool was a bit more shallow where Ben now stood, and out of the water came his cock...hard and plump as the statues surrounding them. So erect, that now only an inch of space separated the two of them. 

“Fuckin' shit!!!” 

Ben stumbled back causing a splash in the water. He was trying to cover himself but it was no use. There was no over what his own body was doing. “Ben, are you alright?” Even Rey was surprised. She thought she would never see it like that outside of paintings and pictures.

He got up and tried to collect himself. The only thing he could do was turn his back to her. “I'm...I'm okay.”

“Why did it…?”

“Don't worry about it, please!” He really didn't want to be talking about this with Rey, knowing that she knew far too less on the subject than she should. He tried to calm himself so that they could get past this. “Can we just finish up our bath in peace?”

“You're going to stay?”

“We can be adults about this,” he said. “Let's just keep our backs to each other then, whoever is ready first gets out first, okay?”

Rey agreed. She didn't want Ben to think she was a pervert anymore and Ben didn't want...whatever just happened infront of her to happen again. They kept their backs to each other and resumed bathing with no conversation.

It lasted only a few minutes.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“What's the point of the bleeding?”

“What?”

“You told me how it's normal for women to bleed at moon-time, but why is it only women? And why did it start when it did for me?”

Ben really didn't want to get into this again. He thought he had told her enough to give Rey a peace of mind that she wouldn't die from it. Did he really need to explain it in more detail? Did he really have to go through the entire natural process of making a…

No! No! And hell no! He was not the man to talk about this. Not to Rey. He needed to get away from this topic quickly. “Maybe we should talk about something else,” he said out loud, though he felt that he was about to regret saying that.

There was a silence and then…

“That book I had...”

Yup. Instant regret. 

He did his best to push away his nervousness with the topic. “Um...yes?”

“The way they were touching each other...”

What Ben wouldn't give to talk about the bleeding again.

“...is that normal?” Rey asked him. “With people, I mean?”

There was no escaping this conversation, so Ben had no choice but to go along with it. He couldn't decide what to tell her that wouldn't make her as uncomfortable as he was feeling right now. He didn't know how honest he should be about it either. “Well...sorta.”

“What do you mean sorta?”

Ben sighed. He went slow, trying to find the right words to explain. “It's not all...gaudy or showy like that. You don't see people doing that all over the place. Just trust me. It's supposed to be a lot more private, more...personal.” He stopped himself from using the word 'intimate'. Though he didn't know why.

“But people do do that?” she asked him.

He grunted in response. He wondered how this conversation could get any more uncomfortable.

“Have you ever done it, Ben?”

That would do it. 

“I'll go get your clothes.” Ben started making his way to the edge of the pool. He wanted to make a quick getaway from that temple as possible. The place was putting too many thoughts in his head that shouldn't be.

______________________________________________ 

The only thing they had accomplished going forward was finding a new head for BB-8 in a melon patch. Rey couldn't find any new stones so she had to carve BB-8's eyes in.

At least Ben had never been more relieved to be continuing on their journey, though he began to wonder if there was a point to it anymore. He had expected to be found and taken far away from this island by now, yet it wasn't going that way. He became more and more certain that they've given up on him. He never thought they would do that. Perhaps he wasn't as valuable or important to his employer as he was always told he was.

Rey was slowing down and looking over in the direction of the beach.

“What is it?” Ben asked her.

“I think we're almost around. We're near where I found you.”

Ben could see something unusual from the beach and headed that way to investigate. As he got closer, he could see the sticks.

Rey, against what she wanted, followed him. “I don't like being here.”

“Why is that?”

“I just...don't like it here. It's a place I avoid if I can help it.”

Ben looked closer at the sticks and was surprised to find actual names carved into them. This intrigued him, considering Rey couldn't read or write. They had to have been written by someone else. Around the corner he could see a rocky cliff with writing similar to the sticks. It had more than just a name written on them.

_**Jakku Air Flight 77**_  
_**crashed here 6-15-02**_  
_**with 35 survivors**_  
_**S.O.S.**_

“This was your plane,” said Ben. “I thought you were alone.”

“Well, I am now,” Rey spat. “So what?”

Ben looked at the sticks in the sand and started counting them. He was near twenty till he got to one that seemed out of place: one that didn't have writing, only scribbles.

“You put that one there, didn't you?”

Rey only shrugged.

“Who was it for?”

She looked down. “I...I don't remember. An old man, I think.”

“You don't remember what happened?”

“Things,” she said. “Just things.” She started walking back into the jungle wanting to get away from the graves. Eventually she found a place to sit and placed BB-8 across from her.

Ben caught up with her, grateful that she didn't run this time, and sat on a log right by her. He began to wonder if he may have crossed a line with her asking too much about the past. He believed her to be honest when she said her memory was vague.

He didn't know what he could say to make her feel better. The quiet seemed good for them both...

...until a flock of birds swarmed in their direction, followed by rustling, and then a deep abnormal growling, the likes of which Ben had never heard of in his life.

Rey was quickly on her feet. “We gotta go!”

“What?!”

“ **RUN!!!** ”


	7. Real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a character death (and not in a flashback). Hate to have done it but it was for character development.

_They found an undiscovered part of the island: quiet, beautiful, and serene. Considering the long difficult night they had to overcome to get there, they were certain that Unkar would be unable to find them...for a long time at least._

_It was the first time since almost the beginning that San Tekka and the little girl were able to rest and not race against time to find food for people other than themselves. They had access to fish and fresh water in their new home. The rocky cliffs shielded them from any jungle intruders. They could keep a signal fire going without anyone else knowing about it. It seemed like the perfect place to wait it out until they were rescued._

_San Tekka used the free time they had to educate the little girl on basic survival techniques, such as how to fish and hunt, and how to make tools and fire from what little the island provided. They would build a basic shelter from palm leaves to shield them during the rainstorms. They were enjoying a freedom by themselves they wouldn't have had they never left Unkar's camp._

_Without a calendar, the little girl would pretend that it was Christmas and tried to build a snowman with sand but the sand in this particular area of the island was too muddy to build anything. She found some melons not too far away from their camp and used a stick to make the two melons look like a snowman._

_“I'm gonna call you...” She wrote in the sand. “B...B...8! Because that's all I can spell.”_

_Since then, BB-8 became considered a third member of the group and went with her everywhere she went._

_The island still held many dangers for them, but in this new life, they were less afraid of death. And best of all, they could eat whatever and whenever they wanted._

_“How long have we been here?” she asked San Tekka while they were having a fish dinner._

_“Almost a year...more than a year…” He shook his head. “I'm afraid even I've lost count.”_

_“Why is it taking so long for them to rescue us?”_

_“It's all part of God's plan,” he mumbled. “If it's his intention for us to stay here, then that is how it shall be.”_

_“But I wanna go home! I wanna find mommy and dadd-”_

_San Tekka cut her off by covering her mouth. The birds were flying in an unusual direction. The old man knew that meant something, or someone was coming. In the pause, they could hear rustling and then human voices._

_“We need to leave now!”_

_San Tekka rush to put the campfire out. The little girl grabbed BB-8. They started making their way into the woods, but the voices were close behind and it was eventual that they were going to catch up._

_San Tekka pulled the little girl into some bushes. “I want you to stay here and don't make a sound,” he said. “If anything goes wrong, you run as fast as you can, and don't let them catch you. Do you hear me?”_

_No response. She was more scared about what she was being told to do than what they were being pursued by._

_“I said, do you hear me?!” He whispered._

_“Y-y-yes.”_

_He pushed her down the second he could see some lights from in-between the trees. The little girl watched as tall shadows began to circle him. She counted about seven large men with primitive weapons and torches. In the center, standing out above the others was the grotesque form of Unkar. “Thought we wouldn't go out looking for you, old man? Or maybe you've forgotten about the rules...and what we do to people who break them?”_

_“If you intend on punishing me like you have the others, Unkar, then you'll have no one left to get your food.”_

_Unkar laughed. “Look around, we're all that's left!”_

_“What about the natives?” asked San Tekka._

_“We got a good look at their place. Anyone that wasn't wiped out, we put out of their misery!” San Tekka took note of some of the fancy trinkets and jewels Unkar and his men now had in their possession. “So...now that we're all alone, we can ease up on the punishing. Let bygones be bygones. You and the kid come back to camp with us, and we'll forget this little escape of yours ever happen.”_

_“The girl died a month ago, from pneumonia.”_

_“You're a terrible liar, old man! We saw your camp and the footprints. Tell the kid to come out of hiding now or we'll bash your head with a boulder!”_

_She wanted so desperately to come out. The fear of what they would do with San Tekka was too much for her. But she remembered what he said about not letting them catch her. She really did not want to go back to working for that man. They didn't leave the camp for nothing. She would stay put and pray silently for San Tekka._

_“Very well...” Unkar ordered his men to grab San Tekka and force his head into the ground. The little girl watched Unkar pick up a large stone in absolute horror._

_She couldn't watch this. But she knew she couldn't help San Tekka._

_So she ran._

_“It's the kid! Get 'er!”_

_“Take your time, boys. She's got nowhere to run to!”_

_As she ran towards the darkness, she could hear Unkar laughing and what sounded like a rock smashing from behind._

~*~ 

Rey was getting a sense of deja vu, holding onto BB-8...running through the trees. Ben was trailing by her, unsure of what they were running from. The noise behind them was getting louder and the trees were beginning to split in unusual ways.

Small animals and birds also seem to running for their lives in the same direction. All it took was for Rey to trip on one and she fell. BB-8 slipped out of her arms and seemed to have vanished. Her knee must have hit something hard because she found herself in terrible pain, unable to move.

“Come on, Rey!” Ben was trying to get her up. Once he realized she wasn't going to get back up and moving on her own, he scooped her up, just like back at the temple.

“BB-8!!!”

“Leave him!”

“No! We can't!”

Ben wasn't listening. No way in hell were they going to stop for a melon when their lives were on the line.

He took one look back and came face to face with a large charging animal...a dinosaur? The strange lizard-looking creature was massive. The trees hid much of its detail, but Ben knew the creature's eyes were staring right at him. And then it screeched.

He just couldn't believe that Rey's jungle monster was right infront of him, as real as himself.

That was enough for him to keep running. Rey continued to beat at him getting him to stop. She tried looking back and finally spotted BB-8 on the ground.

The pursuing creature approached. Without even looking down, it took only one paw to smash BB-8 into a mush.

Rey screamed.

The light of the beach was ahead. Ben didn't know what would happen now. But the creature was moving faster. He had to make a quick decision. 

Ahead of him, he could see that he was running towards the edge of a cliff (how far down, he wasn't sure). As soon as he was out of the forest, he made a quick dash to the right.

The creature popped out but it's massive size could not handle the muddy earth to make a quick stop. It's paws were slipping until the monster found itself sliding sideways off the cliff.

The island suddenly shook. It only lasted a second.

Was the creature dead? Ben had no idea.

He put Rey down and waited. The sounds of the island began to normalize. But Rey was on her knees sobbing uncontrollably.

“Rey...” 

Ben tried to place a hand on her shoulder. But she got up and punched him in the arm. “You let the monster kill BB-8!!!”

“I was trying to save our lives!” Ben yelled. 

“Oh now you believe me about the monster?!”

He sighed. “Yes, I'm sorry...okay?”

“BB-8 is dead because of you!”

She was becoming hysterical and Ben didn't understand it at all. Couldn't she just build a new BB-8 from some melons? “Listen to me, Rey...”

“NO! I HATE YOU!” She was crying and beating at his chest, as if Ben had committed some great murder.

“You need to snap out of it, Rey!” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Just listen to me! BB-8 is not real!”

She was still sobbing.

“He was NEVER alive! BB-8 was NEVER real!”

“ **I KNOW!!!** ”

The island seemed the fall into an unearthly silence. Ben looked at Rey who now seemed completely at a loss. She had been in denial for years as to what was real...what wasn't real...it was her way of coping with the loneliness. BB-8 had been her companion for as long as she could remember. While she often had to change melons when they started to rot, something about watching the monster crush BB-8 seemed definite and permanent…reminding her that she was alone, that she had always been alone.

“I...know...” 

Ben loosened his grip on Rey. She no longer seemed aware of anything. And Ben could only watch as she turned and limped her way back into the forest without a single word.

He didn't follow her. There was nothing he could really do.

~*~ 

_The little girl had spent three days running. Her feet might be small but she was at least quick on them. The skills she had acquired allowed her to hide, to find food in the jungle, to get 5 steps ahead of her pursuers. But she knew it couldn't last forever. There were only so many places to escape to and none of them were permanent._

_She didn't sleep much. She was too terrified to._

_She wished that she hadn't left BB-8 behind._

_But the chase was becoming too much for her. She thanked whatever god existed on the island that she woke from a nap in time to hear them coming. Running would do no good in her exhausted state. So she found a new place to hide._

_After a minute, there were footsteps. She couldn't see much all bunched up in a thicket. But she was close enough to see movement._

_They knew she was near though, the way they were splitting up, walking around slowly._

_“Little girl…”_

_She said nothing._

_“Come on out, little girl,” Unkar tried to call sweetly. “We promise we won't make you work anymore. We'll even let you eat.” From one angle, the little girl could see Unkar pull out a mango and take a huge sloppy bite out of it. It was a terrible moment for her to be hungry. The mango was driving her mad. She was close to giving up everything for it. She knew his promise to not make her work again was a fat lie. But weakness was taking over._

_There a deep foreign roar that caused Unkar and his men to freeze. The little girl couldn't see anything but the trees started to shake, and the animals were fleeing in a panic._

_And then a loud screech, followed by screaming._

_She closed her eyes and shut her ears as much as she could. The noises were horrifying, the bits she could witness through the leaves moreso. She thought she saw drops of red flying past her vision._

_Minutes passed before she realized that silence had returned to the jungle. Still, she remained unmoving for as long as she could._

_When she could no longer wait it out, she took three deep breaths and crawled out._

_There had been signs of a large battle. Bushes had been trampled, the ground filled with large holes that had not been there before. And blood...trails of blood from all directions, even bits of clothes and what seemed like a severed leg._

_It took nearly a day of wandering before she realized that no one, not even Unkar, came seeking her out anymore. She was relieved to have found her way back to where she had left BB-8. “It's okay. I'm back,” she said to the melon. “Let's go fi-...”_

_A few feet ahead of her she could see a mass of flies hovering over a body in San Tekka's clothing. A few jungle rats gathered around a blood-stain boulder where the old man's head should have been._

_The girl stepped away. The stench was getting to her._

_She held BB-8 in her arms and made her way aimlessly further into the island's core._

_“Hello…?”_

_No response._

_“Hellooooooo?!”_

_Only the echo of her call returned to greet her from all directions. Even the animals seemed unresponsive._

_She looked up at all the tall trees that surrounded her. A realization was starting to form that she wasn't ready to accept. This had to be a dream. There had to be someone...anyone…_

_“Daddy? Mommy?”_

~*~ 

It took Rey hours and by then, the skies were becoming a dark gray but here she stood, at the plane...her home. This was the longest she'd ever been away from it in a long time.

When she went inside, everything seemed much darker. Her absence resulted in an inch layer of dust and leaves coating nearly everything inside.

She looked over and saw Charlie and Coco still sitting where they were for afternoon tea, having not moved a muscle.

Ben managed to track her back to the plane as well. But once he got there, he could hear screaming and throwing of objects from the inside. 

He banged on the door. “Rey?”

Rey was curled up in a ball looking at her own destruction. Coco was broken down into nothing but fragments. Charlie's head had been torn off, his fluff lying everywhere. She had unintentionally blocked the door with all the junk she threw around.

“Rey, it's me, Ben.” He realized immediately what a stupid thing that was to say. Of course it would be him? Who else was here?

“You're no one. Go away!”

“I'm not 'no one',” said Ben.

“You're not real! You're imaginary...just like Charlie and Coco and...BB-8.”

“Yes, I am.”

“How do I know?!” she spat angrily at the door. “How do I know that you're even here and not someone I made up in my head like everything else?!”

Ben sighed. “I'm sorry about BB-8.”

Rey said nothing. So he with on. “We're the only two people on this island, Rey. I had a hard time accepting that. We have to make this work because I don't think...no, I know, we're not going to get rescued. I'm sad and lonely but...I know it's nothing compared what you had to live for so long...I wish I could help you...”

The wind was picking up and Ben could hear grumbling from the dark gray clouds above him. “It's gonna rain, Rey. Please let me in.”

He could hear scuffling and eventually the door opened. He was face-to-face with a Rey more completely disheveled than what he saw a few hours ago. Inside the plane, Ben could see everything in a worse shape than it was the last time he saw it, everything scattered and destroyed.

The wind outside was getting louder so Ben closed the door.

Rey was sitting and fiddling with a wallet. He recognized it from when he first met her. Carefully, he crawled over and sat by her so he could get a good look at the wallet.

It had a very faded picture of a family: a man, a woman, and a boy. It wasn't Rey's. The people in the picture looked nothing like her.

“That's not your family, is it?”

He thought he had lost Rey again to the silence. “It's…,” she said softly. “Just something I like to think about...to pretend...”

The inside of the plane started to rock slightly which really disturbed Ben. But Rey didn't seem to care. She must have ridden out god knows how many storms in this plane during her lifetime. But then came the roaring, a noise that seeped it's way into the hollow metal only to intensify. Stuff from outside was starting to hit the walls causing frightening bang noises. 

Ben couldn't take it anymore. He knew that something was terribly wrong. So, he headed back outside.

There was very little rain but the wind was very strong. Branches were flying at him nearly missing him by inches.

He turned around to see Rey coming out of the plane as well. They were both amazed but terrified by how dark the sky was. The air felt abnormally warm and windy. 

And then they heard the roar. The wind changed and Ben looked up to see the tops of trees splitting. Some were even uprooted.

But this was no jungle monster.

Ben had lived in Indiana for several years, and he had seen and lived through a few tornadoes. But they had all been minor to what was coming toward him and Rey. 

Trees were flying upwards to the approaching large black cloud in the sky and the loud itself was getting bigger and moving faster.

“GET INSIDE!!!”

Ben grabbed Rey by the arm and made a quick dash back to the plane. At the speed the cyclone was approaching, with the winds as strong as they were, there was no time to find a cave or better shelter of any sort.

They got back inside and quickly barricaded all the doors and the windows, then crawled to the far back of the shelter where there were no exits. But they both knew it would do them no good. The place was nothing but decaying metal. The cyclone was going to rip it all apart. 

Dents began to appear inside the plane. This was how they were going to die.

The sound coming towards them was worse than any jungle monster either of them would ever know.

Ben could barely hear Rey whimper. “It's never been this bad before.”

The first bit of metal began to peel away and the wind was making its way in. Ben crawled over Rey, determined to use his body as a shield, pinning her to the ground as much as he could.

The last thing he could remember was the deafening sounds of nature and the amount of objects that were hitting him.

…

He could hear birds, all manner of birds.

His body had been tenderized. Soreness defined every part of his body. Ben was afraid of opening his eyes at first. He didn't want to see how bad the damage was.

Eventually, he had no choice. The sky was light and blue again, but the jungle around him was not the same. There were far less trees standing. One was even spread over his legs. Thankfully, it didn't completely crush him, and Ben was able to crawl out and get up, with a great amount of pain.

The shelter was no longer there...only scraps of metal here and there.

And then he realized. “Rey?!”

There was no answer.

“REY!”

He limped around calling for her, following the path of the storm damage. 

Nothing prepared him for seeing her lying faced down by the stream.

“No...no!”

He turned her over. Her face had been marred by a good number of scratches and bruises.

But she wasn't moving. And Ben could only think to himself, this couldn't be it for her...she had survived so many years…

A small cough. It wouldn't have been noticed by anyone, but Ben was quick to lean Rey over and started patting her back. And then the coughs got louder.

He looked at Rey again, but her eyes simply couldn't bring themselves to open. So he shook her. “Rey, look at me!!!”

Almost on queue Rey's vision went from darkness, and then to a bright blur. She sensed nothing, but she could see a face...a man's face. She had no strength yet her hand reached out to touch it. She felt his hair, his cheek, his nose, his blood, his tears…

...and then his smile.

Ben didn't stop her.

She smiled back at him. Yet her eyes had tears too. Her voice hoarse and merely a whisper, but her words were a joy to them both, an assurance that they weren't alone anymore.

“You ARE real.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a chap! 
> 
> Now that our precious bbs have survived, it's time for your input: If you were Ben, how would you teach Rey about le sex in this story?
> 
> Let me know in a comment and thank you very much to my readers old and new. You guys rock!


	8. Island Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prepare for time jumps and steamy-ness!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this is good what I got in store here. Welcome new readers and thank you readers in general.

Three days after the worst storm that Rey had ever encountered on the island, there was a strange calm. Perhaps the injuries that were still healing were keeping her body numb to everything around her. At least she had learned how to use aloe leaves for medicine.

They had returned to the beach so that they could turn their backs from the devastated jungle and keep their eyes to the sea. On the fourth day, Ben got up and started pulling broken tree limbs and branches to the beach and laid them out in a square.

Rey wondered if he was making another attempt at a raft again. “What are you doing?” she asked him.

“Making a shelter.” He gathered another set of four tree trunks and sat them up. “Do you...want to help me?”

The offer was taken.

Ben would gather scraps of wood that the storm had freely provided. Rey would scavenge for all the debris that was leftover. They would make use of everything they could, practically cleaning the jungle of it's wreckage and slowly restoring it to its more natural state.

The two of them combined what little skills they have to work together. Rey had learned how to make tools from the most primitive of objects, which became useful in building up the base. Originally Ben was going to make a simple shelter to keep them dry during the rain. But as the days passed on, he started focusing on a larger, sturdier shelter...the kind that would stand for years. He had become that pessimistic about his chances of leaving. They still had a measly signal fire standing at the ready, but it failed to serve them any use.

There was little for them to talk about. The work on the shelter became their focus, especially since there was no predicting when the next rains would come and the cyclone had wiped out all their best options. At night they laid down on separate sand beds, sometimes looking up at the stars. Ben wasn't big on eating fish so many times a week but it became tolerated. Rey would often try to catch different kinds to make things feel varied.

In a couple of weeks time, the framework of a shelter had been completed: a basic one-bedroom shack with a palm-leaf roof. The floor was a foot above ground in case of high tides. The walls were only part of the way done.

“What do you think?” asked Ben.

“It's a tiny house,” she said.

“We can always expand it. But it's big enough for now. Are you coming in?”

Rey was surprised by this. “Into your house?”

“Well...it's OUR house,” he said. “Come and see.”

He led her inside the shelter. There was only a small opening that both of them had to crawl into. The whole structure was about the size of a shed (still too short for Ben). The floor was covered in bamboo bark that the two of them pain-strikingly laid. And one opposite ends of the room were the pillows and blankets that were scavenged. He would figure out what they could make beds out of later.

“We could make a shelter for you...if you really want your own,” said Ben.

Rey murmured “oh”.

“Let's sleep on it first.”

That first night in the shelter, they struggled to sleep on their opposite ends with what little comfort they had. Ben kept his face to the wall, hoping that staring at nothing would lull him to sleep. He almost failed to hear the scuffling from behind him.

“Ben?”

He turned himself over to find Rey crawling to him, dragging her blanket and pillow along. “Could I…?

Perhaps he was too exhausted to think about the awkwardness of the situation, but Ben did not resist. Instead he reached out an arm welcoming her over. She scooched under his waiting arm putting the blanket over her. They laid there in silence. He paid no mind to Rey placing a hand to feel the rough hair on his chin. 

She quietly confessed, “I just don't want to be alone.”

Ben sighed. “I know.”

They would never sleep separately again.

______________________________________________ 

Nearly everyday since losing BB-8, Rey would draw a picture of him in the sand. It often appeared as a 'B' or an '8'. For some reason that was all she knew and not much else. 

When a month had passed and the moon was full, Rey began to bleed again. Being so far from the temple, she nearly panicked, forgetting her monthly tradition. But Ben had kept her calm, reminding her that it was a normal bodily function, that it would past. 

Knowing that she didn't die once the bleeding stopped, she accepted that Ben had been right. It made her feel stupid and ashamed.

“Did I do something wrong?” Ben asked. He came to sit by her side. She had been curled up into a ball drawing the same circles in the sand with a twig.

“Nothing's normal, is it?”

“Um...” Ben had no clue what she was referring to. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Me...and BB-8...living on an island.”

He was starting to get the picture. “You did what you had to to keep going.”

“I don't know what to do,” said Rey. “They'll think I'm weird.”

“Who will?”

“The people when they find us.”

Ben didn't know what to tell her. So much time had passed. His boss and family more than likely believe he was dead now. He might as well be.

“I don't want them to think I'm weird...or stupid,” said Rey.

“You're not stupid, Rey. You're very resourceful.”

“But I want to know other things…things that you know.”

“Like what?” he asked, fearing that she was going to bring up certain topics again.

“Everything!” she said, getting somewhat excited. “Can you teach me?”

Ben grabbed a stick from the sand. “I suppose we'll have to start out small. Ever heard the alphabet song?”

On that day, Rey had learned to spell her name and Ben's and she nearly broke down crying. It was the first step in learning about the bigger world.

______________________________________________ 

The beach became her school and Ben was the reluctant teacher (at first). Rey was a fast learner. She learned to copy what he wrote and understand what it meant. There wasn't much for her to hone up on her reading skills except for an old plane manual they found. It still fascinated Rey when she tried reading the book to him, even if she knew nothing about planes.

They also had the small atlas. Ben showed her all the areas of the world with it. 

“That's where I'm from.” he said pointing to the United States of America on the map.

“What about me?” Rey asked him.

“Well judging by your accent, I'm guessing here.” Ben pointed to the small island on the other page.

“Eeen...England?”

“Yeah.”

“And where are we now?”

Ben waved his hand over the large patch of blue on the far left labeled 'Pacific Ocean'. “Somewhere...somewhere in there.”

______________________________________________

Ben had ultimately decided to expand the house a bit, a project he took on himself while Rey was trying to write things in the sand.

There were days when he knew she was watching him...the warmer days when he needed to take off his shirt to stave off the heat. He didn't know what to think of that.

But the tables had a way of turning. When he was working, he could see Rey taking off all her clothes at the edge of the water and going into the ocean for a short swim. Sometimes she would come up to sit and relax on the rocks. He was far enough that he couldn't see much detail. Still, he felt as strange as he did when they were bathing in that temple together. He tried to focus on his work to keep his mind distracted.

But she called his name and the next second, he looked up to find Rey standing there wet and naked just feet from him...so close that he could count the freckles on her skin.

Before Ben could decided whether to keep watching her or to politely look away, she approached him and grabbed his hands. “Come swim with me, Ben.”

He was hesitant as all hell, but she was still leading him towards the water. When the tide touched his toes, he started removing his clothes. It wouldn't seem fair for him to be the only one clothed. The breeze from the ocean pricked at his skin, giving him goosebumps as he joined her in the water.

Rey held Ben's hand, leading him into this colorful, strange new world and encountering all the strange creatures he had only seen on television. The ground laid with stones of many colors and rare pearls that would make a man rich beyond his wildest dreams. To his surprise, Rey ignored the pearls. She knew nothing of their value.

They came back up to the surface face-to-face. Ben didn't realize he had his hand's on Rey's waist until she gave a slight “ooh”.

The temptation became too real. Her face gave away her intrigue at the touch. Ben had to remind himself that she hadn't been touched by a human being in years. She looked at him, wondering if his hands were going to move. His eyes though, had moved to her breasts. She reached a hand out and Ben knew that she was looking to guide him…

...but he couldn't do it.

He quietly moved his hands and himself away from her with an apologetic look on his face.

They still slept together that night, but Rey was kept awake by a feeling of disappointment. What had she done wrong?

______________________________________________

 

The house had gotten bigger and more cozy. Ben managed to create a larger bed out of grass and leaves for the both of them, providing better comfort at night. On warmer nights, they would sleep outside where Ben would use the stars to teach Rey astronomy.

Their daytimes were devoted to finding food and sitting side by side, looking out at the beach. There were days where they would hold hands and days where they would huddle up in each other's arms. They still went swimming together when the sea was calm. Ben continued to educate Rey on whatever she could with help of the island but they also found ways to keep themselves entertained. Ben taught Rey how to play Bocce ball using coconuts. In turn, she taught him how to hunt rats and other small creatures in the jungle.

When the sun was setting, they would walk along the beach other just to take in the view.

“What month is it now, Ben?”

“Not sure anymore,” he said. “August? Maybe September.”

“That would make it about...six months?” she asked.

“Yes, that's correct.”

She smiled knowing that the education was finally paying off. “Ever since you came here, it feels like more than that. I don't mind it though.”

“Me neither,” he said honestly.

“What would I be doing if we were off the island?”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you once that I wanted to be normal. I mean, if the crash never happened and I was a normal 19-year-old back in England what would I be doing?”

“Well, it's different for everyone,” he said. “Some get a job. Others go to college. They would live on their own by that point, maybe go on dates and...”

A light bulb had gone off in Rey's head. “Could we do that? Go on a date?”

“Do you even know what that is?” he asked her.

“I think it's something that two people do together and they dress up for it, right? We're two people. We could do that. Could we?”

Ben smiled. “There's not much we could do, other than maybe have a nice fancy dinner.”

“Then we should,” said Rey. 

“It'll just be like every night though.”

“Except we're dressing up, aren't we? I know I can find some old clothes somewhere.”

“If this is what you really want, then we should do it right.” Ben held her hand. “Rey, would you like to join me for dinner tomorrow at sunset?”

“Yes I'd love to!” she said. Rey's happiness got the best of her, she hadn't realized that she had pressed her lips against Ben's cheek until she saw his face turn instantly red. “Oh...”

They said nothing. They only walked back to their house and went to sleep like normal.

The next morning, Rey had gone off into the jungle. After many hours of scavenging, she managed to find a suitcase that had been hidden inside a cave for years. She managed to find a ragged old white dress with pink flowers on it. It was bit too big for her. The straps kept slipping down. But she knew it would be perfect for tonight.

Ben became a bit more excited about the date after he made a discovery that would make their night even better. But aside from that, he had been busy with getting the food, making the food and setting everything up. He was grateful to have found a manual razor to keep his fuzz on his face trimmed. Cutting his hair with a primitive blade though had been quite a challenge.

By the time the sun was setting, everything was set. Ben was putting the last finish touches on a surprise present for Rey, when he heard her come out from the trees. He almost didn't recognize her in her flowing summer dress. Her hair was down being blown to one side by the breeze. She definitely resembled a true girl of paradise.

“Rey...you look amazing.”

She began to blush. Had she ever blushed before? “Well, so do you.”

“All I did was put on a clean shirt and trimmed my hair a bit. Shall we?”

He took Rey by the arm. Around the corner from the house, Ben had lit four tall torches surrounding a beach blanket that laid in the middle. There was a wooden plank that had a cooked fish surrounded by scallop shells. And on opposite sides were two coconut halves. 

He helped Rey to sit. “Before we eat, I have a gift for you.” He reached into his pocket and grabbed a string filled with white pearls.

“Oh, how pretty!” said Rey. “I know they're just rocks, but I like it.”

“They're actually more valuable than you think. May I?” He went to place the string around Rey's neck and neither of them realize their hearts had stopped beating at the close contact they were sharing.

Dinner was a simple affair. Rey had never ate cooked scallop. She always had trouble retrieving shellfish for a meal. “What are these sticks?” she asked pointing to the two twigs infront of her.

“I figure if we're gonna be fancy, might as well try some food the right way. These are chopsticks. A lot of people in this part of the world use them to eat. Here...” He used his hand to guide Rey's in her use of the chopsticks. It took far too many attempts to count and she was getting nowhere. The scallop kept slipping from inbetween the sticks. Eventually she gave up and just jabbed the stick through it, but they both had a good laugh.

“I found something else today too.” Ben pulled out a strange glass bottle. “Not gonna lie, I think I screamed with joy when I found this on the shore today.”

“What's in it?”

“You're gonna have to read the label first,” he said. Ben would often challenge Rey to keep with her learning. 

“Ca...Cap-ta-een...Captain Morgan?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that who the bottle belongs to?”

“Nah, it's just what they call the drink. Want to try some?”

“Okay.” 

She was about to empty her coconut shell of the milk still in it. “Don't do that,” said Ben. “You'll definitly want this mixed.” Ben poured a small amount of the rum into the coconut shells. 

“Why so little?” Rey asked.

“It's a very strong drink. You don't want to have too much of it at once, or it will make you sick. It's gonna make you feel weird too.”

“Maybe it'll be fun,” said Rey. Once Ben gave her back her coconut shell she took a sip. 

“Ooo.” Ben was trying not to laugh at the strange squinty face Rey was making as she down her very first sip of alchohol. “That tasted strange. Like medicine, I think.”

“Like I said, it's strong stuff.”

“Can I have more?”

“You sure about that?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “You said it would make me feel weird. I want to know...”

Ben reluctantly pour her another drink and began taking his.

 

He didn't know how many either of them had. They had nearly finished the entire bottle. Ben was just happy at having his first drink in months. Rey began to feel goofy just as Ben said she would. 

They both did.

And now they were back on their feet, holding hands, attempting to lead one another in a waltz that they were making up in their heads. They were swinging back and forth against each other trying not to fall and giggling like children at their very sloppy choreography.

“I like dancing!” Rey sang. “Do you...(hic)...do you like dancing Ben?”

Ben's speech was slurred. “I...I don't think I do...” he said in spite of his laughter and enjoyment.

“We can do something else.” Now Rey's speech was slurring as she tugged at Ben. “I know! Let's go swimming!”

He pulled her back. “It's night, Rey...and we're drunk! We...(hic)...we could drown.”

“Then...we'll swim in the sand!”

She broke free from Ben's hands and was taking off her dress. She had worn nothing underneath. Ben stopped her from dropping to the ground. “Blanket,” he said trying to lead her over. “You don't want sand in your butt-crack.”

“Oh...good idea!” She stumbled her way over, clearing everything off the beach blanket and laid back on it. “Beeeeeeeeen! Are you coming swimming with me?!”

“Alright.” Ben struggled to take off his clothes. The beach blanket wasn't all that big. The only way he could really join her was to hover his massive body over hers.

His hand accidentally touch the side of Rey, sending her into giggles.

“Rey, are you…?” His fingers brushed against the side again and Rey once more let out a strange sound. “Oh...you're very ticklish!”

“No...stop!”

“Can't do that now!” Rey was now in complete hysterics as Ben's fingers began dancing all over her bare body. Her attempts to stop him were futile until…

They both went silent and looked down. Her hand was on Ben's wrist and his hand, of all places, was on Rey's left breast.

Instead of pushing it away, she slid her hand down to touch his fingers. Ben began to trace circles around her nipple, treating it as the fascinating curiosity that it was, until it shriveled like a raisin. The circles got smaller until there was nothing to trace but the very tip.

He turned his attention back to Rey the second he heard her moan.

They didn't know who pulled at the other first. It didn't matter. They closed the space between them. Rey remembered how soft Ben's lips from the night she found him. They were still as wonderful now as they were then. She was nearly taken aback by his tongue going into her mouth. But instead, she chose to imitate him.

There was no time to breathe. Ben was no longer hovering over her, but laid his entire body on top of hers, arms clawing at her luscious hair. His lips were traveling downwards to kiss every inch of her body.

Rey pulled back as she felt something move against her below her waist. She realized that Ben's thing was unintentionally rubbing itself against her, just inbetween her legs. She reached a hand out to grab it causing Ben to gasp. Her thoughts returned to that book she had for many years of people touching each other just like they were now. 

“It goes inside me, doesn't it?”

Ben closed his eyes unable to control himself or the fact that he was getting hard. “Yes,” he breathed.

“Then do it.”

“No.” He tried to push himself up. “I...can't.”

“Why?”

“It's not...” said Ben.

“Don't you want me?”

“Rey, look at us.” He succeeded in pushing himself up and was now sitting beside her. “We can't just jump into this. It's not that simple and you still don't know...”

“I don't care!” she said sitting back up. “I don't care what I don't know! It wouldn't hurt to do it just once...”

“Yes it would...for you,” said Ben. “Don't be fooled by that magazine you had, Rey. You've never done this before, and it's not fun like they make it out to be.”

“I've been hurt enough, Ben.”

He couldn't look at her knowing that she was going to cry again. “I'm sorry. But your first time shouldn't be like this. You deserve better after everything you've been through.”

She said nothing. It didn't help that he was still feeling hard and desperately needed relief. He kept his back to her. “I need to...you know...”

Rey crawled over to him. “Can I watch you? Please?”

He had no energy to turn her down. He quietly held her hand and began relieving himself with the other. For Rey, it was a fascinating sight to watch him grow and get erect, like a plant in the springtime.

His moans were soft at first but then grew louder. Then he tilt his head back. “Rey...” He guided her hand to his aching cock. “Keep going...”

She knew what he meant. Her hand was barely able to wrap around it. She never thought she would be actually touching it, let alone sliding her hand up and down it. Ben was moaning louder and louder with Rey keeping her eyes on what she was doing. It was getting harder and harder.

Soon a strange creamy liquid began to burst out from the very tip. The sound Ben made was similar to one that she would make whenever she…

Ben finally fell backwards onto the sand taking deep breathes. “Rey?”

“Yes?” she asked in waiting anticipation.

“You should drink some water before you...before you go to bed. Alot so your head doesn't hurt in the morning.”

She sighed. “Okay...” She got up and walked away, leaving Ben lying there with a high chance of getting sand in places that would irritate him for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry...
> 
> The next chap might make up for things though.


	9. Island Wedding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this one took a while, but I think it will have been worth that wait.
> 
> I dedicate this chap to ReyloRobyn2011 for that wonderfully awesome aesthetic she made.

Despite their best efforts, the hangover still came the next morning. The sunlight had made opening their eyes unbearable. While Rey was still asleep, Ben stumbled out bed and found the inside of his home spinning. He went into the jungle to collect water and his mind really was buzzing. He could have sworn he was hearing whispers from all directions and saw nothing but spinning trees. It was a miracle he would even make it back to the beach at all.

But when he got inside the house, Rey was gone. 'Not again,' he thought. The memories of last night were catching up with him and he began to wonder if what they almost did last night upset her. Was it a mistake? Should they had done it or would that have only made the situation worse? 

When day turned to night, the hangover decreased but the worry grew stronger. Ben trekked the jungle searching for Rey again only to be greeted by the same faceless whispers. It was a windy night and the trees were rustling. That had to be it or otherwise, the island really was playing tricks on him. 

Eventually, Ben would lie in some unfamiliar part of the forest and dream of the temple. When he woke, it was the next morning. It made him wonder. Had Rey gone there again? It wasn't even her period time. 

After hours of trekking, Ben would finally find her, sitting against a tree seemingly look out at nothing. It was the hot season on the island. Neither of them were wearing anything above the waist, but Rey's long hair what covering her nipples up perfectly. Her bottom half was covered by a grass skirt that she had fashioned herself. Clothes that properly fit were scarce on the island, underwear even moreso.

Sweet temptation! No man would be able to resist Rey on a tropical island like this.

“Did I worry you?” she asked when she saw Ben approaching her.

“You did a bit.”

Ben looked to see that Rey had been keeping her eyes glued to a small branch. On it were two lizards that were stacked, one atop of the other. They were positioned in such a way that they were obviously mating. 

“Are you mad at me?” he finally asked her. “Is this...because we didn't have sex?”

Rey's eyes widened and she looked at him. “Sex? Is that what you call it?”

“Uh...yeah. That's what most people call it.”

Her eyes were pleading. “Is it something wrong with me? Is that why you wouldn't...”

“No!” Ben sat by her side. “No, it's not you at all.”

“Because I don't know anything...”

“Rey, listen to me,” said Ben. “If things were different than maybe...It's just that you're the most innocent and purest girl I ever met. I'm just scared of being the one who has to change that for you.”

Rey was tempted to disrupt the mating lizards but opted instead to prick a leaf from the ground. “So, you've had...sex...before?”

Ben sighed. “Yes, I have.”

“What were they like?” she asked him. “The girls you've done it with?”

“Different,” he said. “Different even from each other. Some I've only known for a night and never saw again. A few I was with much longer but it never worked out.”

“You did it alot with them?”

Ben smiled having accepted that these questions would go on forever. It felt unusual for Rey to be so curious and intrigued with his history. “It wasn't always about the sex. With those few...it was only because we thought we were in love, that we were going to be together for a very long time.”

“We've been together for a long time.”

“We have,” said Ben. “I wasn't lying about your first time hurting, Rey. That's why it should be with someone you love.”

“I love you, Ben.”

He half-expected her to say that. “Do you? Or is it because I'm the only man you've ever known?”

She took him by the hand. “This island is my world. When it's the only life you know, you learn to love every little thing about it.” 

He understood. The island had seemed like a hellhole when he first arrive, but over the months that it was him and Rey, Ben began to find beauty in it...even in her. The whole place was possessing him in ways he could never imagine.

“I don't want to be a girl anymore, Ben” she told Ben looking into his eyes. “I want to be a woman, even if it hurts. If there really is love in it, then please...let me know. Let know something...anything.”

Ben was foolish to think he didn't want this as much as Rey did. He could feel himself feeling something beyond the natural desire to pin her down and plow her right then and there. Rey was special, and to him, she deserved every moment of discovery to reflect that. They could take it slow. They could take things one at a time.

“What do you want to know first?”

Rey looked down and she unbuttoned the pants he wore. She slid them down, following the boxers he wore beneath that. It wasn't hard and big like she had seen and felt the night before. Still, she hovered her hand over it like an object of great fascination. And Ben allowed her, keeping silent, admiring her curiosity. “What do you call it?”

“A 'penis',” he said smiling. “We call it a penis.”

She smiled back and then parted the center of her grass skirt. She had nothing to wear underneath and with two fingers she pushed back the folds of her intimate part, revealing the entrance to her 'pocket' to Ben. “And mine?”

“V-vagina.”

She pointed one finger at a particular spot just right above her opening. “When I touch myself there, am I supposed to feel…?”

“Yes, that's normal,” he assured her. “For many living things, sex is as natural as eating and sleeping.”

They looked at each other for one long uncomfortable moment. Ben believed he knew what Rey was thinking. He reached out a hand to touch it. She let out a surprise gasp. Rey knew it felt good when she touched herself. She never thought it felt even better at the hands of another.

“I'll go in,” he said softly. “Sorry if it hurts.”

His fingers were much bigger than Rey's, nowhere near what his 'penis' was in size. She mentally prepared herself for his entry. She felt the pinch of pain he warned her about as she felt his two biggest fingers push their way in.

She moaned. She wasn't sure if it was pain or something else.

“I'm gonna move them slowly.” 

She felt him thrusting his fingers in and out. The more he did, the crazy she felt. It was a new level of feeling that she never had when she touch herself.

“Faster?” Ben asked.

“Yes!” Rey breathed. Her moans were getting louder with each thrust. “Ben, I'm…! I'm gonna...”

“I know,” he told her. Every sound Rey make motivated him to go faster, harder...

“Oh!” 

She shuddered.

Ben pulled his fingers out and Rey could see them glistening with her cum. He leaned over to kiss her. They lied there together, side-by-side, embracing the afternoon sun of the jungle. Rey never thought it was possible to feel this happy with another human being.

“Ben?”

“Yes?” They were both looking up in wonder at the trees around them.

“Do you still want to get off the island?”

“Well, what about you?” He asked her.

“Sometimes I think, it wouldn't be so bad to stay here forever...just the two us.”

“There's so much you're missing out there, Rey.”

“I know,” she said. “I don't like thinking about it.”

“Didn't you have any dreams, any goals when you were little?”

“I don't remember.” She laughed to herself. “I guess every girl's dream was to get married. So there's that.”

This put a smile on Ben's face and he held her hand. “Why don't we?”

“What? Get married?” Rey asked. “Are you serious?”

“It would just be for fun.”

“Don't you need a church and a church person for that?”

“Actually,” said Ben. “I think I know where we can go.”

______________________________________________ 

At nightfall, Ben and Rey were standing infront of the large face statue at the temple, a place Rey hadn't been to in months. 

Every torch and cauldron that surrounded them was lit. Ben was wearing plain clothes but Rey didn't have a white dress. Rather, she turned the old flower dress from their date inside out, then put a white t-shirt over it. She had flowers in her hair and held a bunch in a bouquet.

“Are you ready, Rey?” He asked her.

“Yes, but...” She was feeling strangely happy and nervous all at once for something that Ben was only doing to amuse her. “...we still don't have a church person.”

“That's not really important. The important part is the vows we make.”

“What's a vow?”

“It's like a promise...a pledge we make to one another. And we can do that on our own.”

“Oh.”

“Do you wanna go first?”

She took a deep breath. “Okay...um...Ben, I'm so happy you came here. You have no idea...I've been lonely here. I thought I was going to be alone forever.” Her voice began to shake. “And sometimes I still feel like this is all a dream and...”

Ben could see her eyes watering. This wasn't turning out like had expected. And soon she started sniffling. As soon as he took her into his arms, she let it all out. It didn't matter to him that she was getting his shirt wet. She was starting to make him feel the same pain for her that she had.

“Rey, it's not a dream,” he said happily. “You're not alone anymore.”

Rey dried her tears trying to sum up the courage to speak to him of other things, little silly things that she hoped for but felt would be impossible on this island. Like wanting a family...any family would do. If by some chance, they did get rescued and their fun little marriage was over, at least Rey would have a whole world where she could find it elsewhere.

She thought it would be too much and too absurd to share with Ben. So for now, she would enjoy this. “I know you're only doing this to make me feel better. But thank you, Ben.”

Ben knew it was now his turn. He clearly didn't think to plan anything. He didn't know what to say or how to say it. “Rey...”

The moment was broken as he turned his head to the sky and froze, his face in complete disbelief. Rey asked “What is it?” She tried to look in the same direction he was looking at and her face went into shock too.

Amidst a dark, starless night, they both could see it. A red blinking light, inbetween two other lights in the sky...and they were moving in unison their way. They could both tell, they weren't shooting stars. The lights kept moving in their direction, followed by a faint rumble.

They both turned to look at each other, realizing what it meant, and they knew they needed to act fast.

Ben grabbed a torch. He knew where the closest fire signal setup was from the temple. He could make it there before the plane did. He could light it up. The plane could spot it. They could be rescued!

He made one leap over a fallen trunk and ran. They could get off the island. He could go home and back to…

“Ben?”

Rey was looking at the back of Ben. He had ran only a few feet and then stopped for no reason. She didn't understand what was going on. Why did he stop running?

The rumble from above got louder. They both looked up and watch the lights of the plane fly over them and towards the direction of the beach.

They remained unmoving even long after the noise and the lights were gone.

Ben came back to the alter, putting the torch back where it belonged. Rey was confused by the look on his face. 

“Are you okay?” She asked him. “Why did you stop?”

Ben smiled. “Because you were right. We don't have to go back. We can stay here and be happy for the rest of our lives.”

“But it's...the wedding is just...”

“Real, Rey. It's real as it's ever going to get. I love you. And I will give you more than the island has ever provided you. That is my vow.”

“Oh, Ben!”

Knowing that she was satisfied, Ben took out a small object from his pants pocket. He had managed to fashion a ring made with grass and a pearl stone, to match the necklace he made for her a few days ago. He placed the ring on the proper finger, and she knew it was part of the wedding tradition, which made her even more happy.

They shared one long hungry kiss infront of the face statue. They knew the island gods surrounding them weren't real, but they felt as though they had just been given their blessing. 

“Is that it then?” Rey asked Ben. “Are we married now?”

“Actually,” he said. “There's one more custom to make this official.” To Rey's surprise, Ben started taking off his clothes. Once he was completely naked, he proceeded to pull off the dress and shirt from Rey and lowered her onto the grass.

She was about to start removing the flowers she had in her hair. But Ben held her hand back. “Keep 'em on.”

He began to massage her breasts and Rey began to moan once more. He formed a new trail of kisses down her neck. “It's tight inside,” he said between kisses.. “That's why the first time will hurt. After that, you'll adjust more and more.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Let's get you wet first.” He took his hands off of her and scoot back. Rey wasn't sure what he was doing at first. Then he lowered his head between her legs.

His tongue began to explore her folds. Then she felt herself being parted. Ben's tongue traveled up to the spot she had showed him earlier, the one that made her feel wild at the slightest touch.

She nearly screamed. Ben gave her clit a few hard licks and then a gentle nibble. He would cherish this...how inanely sensitive every part of Rey's body truly was.

And now she was getting wet.

Ben took his mouth off of her. He didn't want her to cum just yet. That would be something they would share and experience together.

His cock had gotten hard and thick again. They both exchanged deep breathes. “Are you ready, Rey? If you hurts too much, you'd tell me?”

“Yes,” she gasped. 

He couldn't hesitate no more. He spread her legs as much as he could, positioning Rey to make her comfortable. He took his time getting himself into her, treating each centimeter into her body as if it were glass.

“Oh-oo.” Rey dug her fingers into the dirt, determined to overcome the pain from the foreign invasion of her body. Ben's penis was far from being a pair of fingers. It was stretching her in a way she thought the human body could never be stretched.

Ben, relieved that she was wet enough to take him, started his slow thrust inside her. The wind was rustling around him again and so were the strange whispers that he was determined to ignore.

For this moment was all about Rey. She was rendered speechless from the sensations. Ben felt himself wanting more, whether they were both ready or not. He hadn't had sex in a very long time. They both needed this.

He thrust harder, rocking her hips in the process. It was starting to make Rey's body shake and her small breasts bounce. 

“Yes!” she was screaming. It was clearly a pleasurable 'yes'.

“Harder?” Ben asked.

“God! I'm gonna pee!”

Ben laughed inbetween breaths. “No, you're not! I'm gonna...”

Their bodies were aching for release. Ben's movement became rougher and more determined. Rey's cries of pleasure were getting out of control.

She could her inside getting warm, filling with the creamy liquid she had seen come out of Ben. And they went silent. The birds and night animals were loud with reaction from all the screaming.

They were both out of breath as Ben pulled out of her. His cum was leaking out from both of them, and to his regret, a bit of Rey's blood but that was to be expected. If anything the blood meant that there was no question to Rey now being a woman.

And not just any woman...but his wife.

The grassy knoll became their marriage bed. And they exchanged more kisses under the watchful eyes of the unmoving gods.

 

______________________________________________ 

 

They would not return to their home the next morning, nor did they went to retrieve their clothing. 

Something, something greater than themselves, was keeping them in the darkest shadowy parts of the jungle and it wasn't just the humidity. Ben was losing hold of his once skeptic self. He truly was beginning to feel a greater force at work since the night of their consummation. 

And now here he was, standing naked in the middle of the jungle, unembarrassed as he picked off a bug from a leaf.

“The brown ones.”

Rey stood behind him and she too was naked, but this Ben did not avert his eyes from. In their jungle paradise, they had become like Adam and Eve...without innocence but also without shame. “I told you they taste the best.” She then came up to Ben to take the bug from his hand and fed it to him.

He consumed the insect whole.

“I guess they are,” he said. “I can see why you don't do much hunting.”

“It's harder than it looks. I've seen pigs in the jungle but they don't come out often, and they run too fast for me.”

“I could catch them.”

Rey chuckled. “I dunno.”

“I can be pretty fast. Now that I know this island better...I bet I could even chase you.”

“Try it then.”

Rey started taking off, with Ben following behind. Once in a while she would stop to let him catch up…

...and eventually he did, gently tackling her to the ground and tacking advantage of her sensitive skin to tickle her once more.

“You make this too easy,” he said.

Rey couldn't stop laughing. “I hate you, Ben.”

“No, you don't wifey.”

How right Ben was.

“What happens now?” she asked.

Ben smiled. “You already know.”

Rey turned from him and got on all fours. She could feel Ben behind him, parting her so that her could enter her again. To be taken from behind was a new experience for Rey. And yet it felt so natural. They were doing it like the animals, even making loud noises as Ben penetrated her.

Thus began what was almost a near daily routine. Their love-making, which first scared away the nearby animals, was soon accepted as another act of nature in the jungle. 

Eating...sleeping...fucking. That was the life that Ben and Rey were adapting to. It was a regression. They were becoming more and more like animals, nearly loosing all sense of time and civility. Ben wasn't counting how many full moons had passed but it had to be a few.

This truly was the island's spell, and it was a powerful one because they were too happy to even care. With every day that he would look upon Rey, adoring her, tracing his fingers up and down her skin to the sound of her moans, Ben knew that the life he knew before the crash was over. He had no desire to be anywhere else. 

“Are you happy here?” he asked her one night.

“I am,” she breathed.

His eyes were collecting every detail of her. “There's been something different about you, lately. I just can't figure out what it is.”

“I think I had some bad meat the other day,” she assured him. “But I got better.”

“But other than that, you're okay?”

She smiled. “More than I could ever be. I haven't even bled in moons.”

Ben froze. “Wait, what?”

“Oh sorry,” she said. “I meant I haven't bled in 'months'. I guess you were right about it not being a curse. And I think my breasts have gotten bigger. Isn't it wonderful?” She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “I'm gonna go take a swim. I expect you to join me.”

When Rey got up to leave, Ben sat on the ground, still trying to process what she had meant.

She hadn't bled...for months. But that could only mean…

He got up and hurried over to the lake. It was here in the moonlight that he got a better look at Rey before she stepped into the water and saw almost a completely different figure. Her breasts were bigger and rounder than he had known them to be. The moon was full and no blood seeped from between her legs. 

His eyes caught one quick glimpse of a hill that was forming on her belly. So small, yet he knew it was going to change their entire world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess you should have finished up that talk much sooner, Ben.
> 
> Whoops!


	10. Whispers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben finally gives Rey some overdue info while the island gets up to some heebie jeebies.

Damn! Shit! Fuck! Shit! Fuck!

Crap! Fucking-fuck! Fuck! Shit!

Ben never thought he could fuck anything up to this degree. He was usually the man raining punishment on others for their mistakes. That was back in his old life. Now he had no one to blame for what was happening but himself. Worse yet, he wouldn't be the only one paying the consequences.

For fuck's sake! All that time and he never thought once about pulling out or finding protection. Ben was so used to having the girl bring it up before anything got done. But Rey knew nothing of such things. 

Gods, how was he going to tell her? Why did he not tell her sooner that this was how babies were made? It was obvious she had no clue. If she did, then she would have never wanted to spend the last several months the way they had: living in some form of eternal bliss, in constant exploration of their sexual selves.

And all the while, the signs of what was happening to Rey were right in his face (the overeating, the sickness) and he had been completely ignorant to all of them.

He wanted to the blame the island. Something about this place had taken all control away from him. The whispers never stopped. He heard them more when they were making love. The temple began to appear more and more in his dreams. They were not signs, he would tell himself. There must be some plant on the island, some form of drug, that was making both of them high to be acting like this. 

Ben would spend that entire night not sleeping by Rey's side as was custom. Instead, he was pacing back and forth, trying not to look upon the now noticeable changes to her body. It didn't help that she was sleeping so innocently, oblivious to what was happening inside of her. 

By morning the decision was officially made. And Rey awoke to seeing Ben standing over her. “Mmm...Ben,” She smiled thinking he was messing with her. “Why do you have your clothes on? Is this another game?”

“Not a game,” said Ben in a completely serious tone. He then tossed her the old white dress she had not worn since their wedding. “Get dressed. We're going back to the beach.”

Now Rey began to realize something was wrong. “What? Why?”

“I'll explain when we get there. Just please, cover yourself now.”

Cover herself? Was he serious? She looked down and realized she had been getting a bit chubby around the belly, but didn't think it was that much of a problem. Yet once Rey put on the dress, she realized something was off.

“That's odd,” she said. “This dress doesn't feel so big anymore...oh!” 

Ben turned around, horrified at the sight of the two wet circles appearing on Rey's dress, just right over her breasts. Rey was confused by the wet spots herself, and quickly crossed her arms over them.

They hurried back to the beach and back to their old house, which was thankfully still standing. Ben would need to clean out the leaves and reinforce the framework again. He would need to set up a new signal fire which was only reminding him how stupid he was for not flagging down that plane when he had the chance. 

And what if another plane never comes? Rey would have to have the baby here. What if the baby doesn't survive? What if Rey…

“I'm hungry, Ben,” she said, sounding ashamed. “I'm sorry.”

“What? Why are you apologizing?”

“I know you've been looking at me funny since last night. It's cause I'm getting fat, isn't it? You don't think I'm pretty anymore? Is that it?”

Ben hugged her and kissed her. “No! You're very beautiful, Rey.”

“I wish I could stop eating.”

“You shouldn't,” he said. “Believe me, you shouldn't.”

“Can we have some rat? I know you don't like it but...”

He knew that the pregnancy was driving her taste for the island rodent. “It's okay. I'm gonna get your rat meat. Then we'll need to talk.”

“Don't you want my help?”

“Let me do it,” said Ben. “You need to rest.”

With little experience in hunting, Ben thought it would take him hours to find the food Rey desperately craved. He would eventually return to the beach with a few rats, most of which Rey consumed before Ben could finish cooking it all over their campfire. “This rat actually tastes good,” she said, licking her fingers dry. “Oh god, I ate too much didn't I?”

But Ben wasn't paying attention to her. He was running his fingers through his hair and breaking a sweat. Rey thought he was going to stop breathing at any moment. “Are you okay, Ben? What's wrong?”

He couldn't look at her. He couldn't bear to see her reaction when he tells her. “Rey, do you...did you ever learn about where babies come from?”

“I know they don't come from storks. I'm not that naive anymore,” she said. She couldn't let him know that back when she believed in the stork myth, she often wished for one to bring her a baby, just so she wouldn't be all alone on the island. “To be honest, it's been so long, I can't remember what babies really look like.”

Ben sighed. This was getting harder and harder by the second. “Back when I said sex was what living things did...it wasn't just about feeling good. It's how they have children. It's how they bring them into the world.”

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about, Ben? We didn't need to come back here for that.”

“Yes, we did. Are you not getting it?! Rey...you're going to have a baby.”

She was confused. “What? From the sex? But how did that…?”

“Listen to me, Rey,” he said, grabbing a stick. “I'm going to tell you what I should have told you a long time ago.”

In the sand, Ben did his best to draw a diagram of both of their privates...then having to explain how what came from him contained the seed of a new life...how it led to conception...and finally, the real reason why Rey hadn't bled in months.

“Right now, it's like a plant buried inside you,” he said. “But it's going to grow into a baby.”

There was an unearthly silence on the beach. Not even the crashing of waves could break it.

“Rey? Please say something.”

She looked away from Ben and down at her stomach. “Is that why I'm getting fat?”

“Yes,” he said. “Rey, I'm so sorry. I never intended for this to happen. I could have prevented it and I didn't think to...”

“I'm not mad, Ben.”

That...was not the response he had anticipated. “Y-you're not?”

“I'm happy. It's another person on the island...a baby! We'll have to take care of it, of course. We can be like the baby's mom and dad, right?”

For the first time that day, Ben smiled and then gave a soft laugh. “Yes, it will be like that. Exactly that.” He kissed her then. “I don't want to leave you in the dark anymore, Rey. Is there anything else you want to know? Anything at all?”

Rey thought for a second, and a sudden fear struck her. “Ben, how does the baby come out?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when it's time for the baby to be born, how do we get it out from inside me? Will we...” She started to shake. “Will you have to cut me open?”

“No,” Ben assured her. “No, you don't need to worry about that. Cutting open the body is very rare and only needed if the baby can't come out normally.”

“But if that's not the normal way, then what is?”

Ben was nervous, but he need to tell her. “Your baby in your uterus which is connected to your...vagina. Which means…you're gonna have to push it out...through your vagina.”

Rey gave a nervous laugh. “Don't be silly, Ben. A baby can't fit through there. There's no way...”

“It can, Rey. It's how we've done it since the dawn of time.”

She was shaking her head. “No, that can't be right. I wouldn't be able to. It's just you said...”

“And I was right wasn't I? When I said your first time with me would hurt?”

“You helped though. It didn't hurt for very long and it got better.”

“God, this is exactly why I…” He sighed. “This isn't like sex, Rey. Your going to stretch further than your body can handle. The pain's going to be worse...a million times worse.”

She was starting get really scared, and Ben couldn't blame her. “Isn't there anything you can do to help?”

Ben looked at her, with a heavy sadness. “There's no medicine...no painkillers. And there's no way of knowing if there's anything wrong. There's too many risks without a doctor. That's why we need to get off the island!”

“But you...”

“I can't help you, Rey! I'm sorry.”

She couldn't believe what Ben was telling her. There was no way she could push a baby out like that. And Ben was looking at her as if she had a chance of dying in the process.

She began to back away from him.

“Rey…?”

Ben knew what she was about to do. “Please, Rey, don't...”

Her heels kicked off in the sand and she began running down the beach.

“REY!!!”

She turned heading back into the jungle, the sun was setting and Ben had yet to master the jungle under the cover of darkness. In spite of his best efforts, he was quick to lose her trail.

He couldn't let this happen. He needed her to come back. He needed both of them to come back.

______________________________________________ 

Ben had spent the whole night searching and calling for her. It was dangerous and he was exhausted but he wouldn't give up. Rey was his wife and he scared her away. But then, he had done this to her. And now she was terrified of what was to come.

When the sun came up, the thought occurred to Ben to search the temple. When he arrived, he was disappointed to find no sign of her. The place had remain untouched since their wedding night.

As he turned to leave and look elsewhere, the wind came again...and so did the whispers.

He ignored them, but then the whispers were followed by a strange melodic hum, so loft and low...like a choir warming up. 

He found no sight of anything in all four directions. The humming continued. This strange distraction had to the be the wind blowing through some hollow trees. And he wasn't going to let that stop him.

But the sun was starting to get to him. Its rays were beaming down reflecting on every surface, making the morning air misty and bright. For a moment Ben had been blinded. The strange tune would not cease. When he opened his eyes, he could see the backside of a woman.

“Rey?”

It clearly wasn't Rey. This woman was a bit shorter and from her hair, much older. Ben got closer. The woman didn't move or even took note of his presence.

He was in greater shock than he was when he got around to face her.

He couldn't believe it. It had to be ten years, possibly longer since he had last seen her. And yet here she was.

“Mom?”

The woman spoke without even looking at Ben in the eyes. “Where are you, Ben?”

“Mom, I'm right here!” Ben tried to shake her but the woman wouldn't move. 

He had to stop and get his head together, remind himself of his situation. This couldn't be his mother. His mother couldn't be here in the middle of the jungle. It wasn't possible. This was the island making him hallucinate her.

“I know he's alive, Han.”

Han? That was a name he thought he wouldn't hear again.

“Promise me you'll find him.”

Ben became infuriated. He knew this was all a hallucination but the idea that Han would even care enough to find him…

He batted his arm at his mother and she vanished into a mist.

Ben was now swinging his arm at nothing.

Another voice called from behind him. “Kylo Ren?”

Ben recognized that voice. It was the only one he had any tolerance or patience for before the crash. He turned around and saw the frail balding form of his employing Snoke looking down on him. The look of disappointment on the man's face was one he had seen many times before.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Ben tried to ignore him. He wasn't real.

“I sent search parties all over the entire ocean for you! One plane…,” said Snoke. “One plane comes across your island and you choose to ignore it?! Have I not done enough for you?!”

“You have no idea where I am,” said Ben.

“Oh, but I do. You have failed me, Kylo Ren. Look at what you've become: nothing more than an animal, playing house with your sloozy fuck-toy. You are a disgrace to me!!! All we have worked for! All we have accomplished...”

“It wasn't my fault!”

“Everything IS your fault. Now, I leave you to your fate. Pray that you never leave this island. You do not wish to know what shall happen if I find you.”

Another ray of light blinded, Ben. This time Snoke had vanished. Ben started running.

“REY?!”

He only got a few more steps and looked up.

A boney, skinless, native...charging at him at rapid speed. A high-pitched scream.

One blink later and the native was gone.

Ben dropped to the ground, drenched in sweat. Just infront of him was a skeleton half buried into the earth, having been covered by vegetation. 

He took a few deep breathes. It had to be the native that tried to charge him.

Water...he needed water. 

Ben got up and stumbled around until he found the nearest water source. A few handfuls down his throat and he few more splashed into his face, he could bring himself back to sanity. He can make the voices and the visions go away.

It took him some time, but he could feel himself being refreshed. His head wasn't hurting anymore. And even the whispers and the humming were gone. He looked up and considered blessing whatever god was up there. For this island was strangely starting to resemble hell or some form of limbo anyway.

Across the stream from which he was using, the grass began to move. But this time Ben would be prepared. No more ghosts or hallucinations.

Instead, a wild pig stuck its head out from the grass and slowly made its way to the same stream for a drink.

Ben stared at it. The animals seemed unbothered by his presence.

The wheels in Ben's head began to turn. He looked around for the perfect rock...one that would resemble a spear.

By afternoon, the pig he had encountered, was now dead and roasting over a fire on the beach. Ben fanned as much of the smoke as he could towards the direction of the jungle.

He hoped his plan to find Rey would work.

As the smell of charred pork began to overpower him, someone finally came walking along the beach.

To Ben's relief, it wasn't another hallucination.

“Oh thank god, Rey!” Ben ran up to her determined not to let her go for anything. “Where did you go?”

“I…,” she seemed confused. “I just need some time to think...but then I must have fallen asleep.”

“Rey, I'm sorry. I can't do anything about what will happen. I can't do anything about the pain. But I promise you: you won't go through it alone.” 

She nodded in understanding. He kissed her in the hopes that it would ease her fears away for now. “You hungry?”

Rey couldn't believe that Ben had done it. He managed to find and take down an entire boar. Even she in all her time on this island, couldn't accomplish that. And it was wonderful to be able to eat something other than rats or fruit. 

Ben told her it was better food for the baby as well.

When Rey reached for her second helping, Ben stared at her arm and stopped her. “Rey, what did you do to your arm?!”

She looked at her forearm to find markings. They could have been red bruises except they weren't shaped like bruises nor did they hurt: a strange variant of circles and lines. “I thought...this was part of the whole baby thing.”

“Trust me, Rey. It's not. What happened?”

“I...I don't know. I don't even feel hurt.”

“You don't remember falling on anything?”

“No, I don't...”

“Can you promise me something, Rey?”

She wondered when Ben pulled her closer to him. He looked down at her. This was a plea more than anything. “Promise me you won't go into the jungle again.”

“What? Why?”

“There's something there,” he told her. “I don't know what it is. But it's stronger than both of us. I think we'll be safe as long as we stay near the beach. Please, Rey. Just promise me?”

The jungle had been Rey's home. She knew all the dangers that lurked in there. But over time, she learned to accept the unknown it possessed, all the beauty it had too.

She took another look at the strange markings that appeared on her arm. “I promise, Ben.”

______________________________________________ 

Though it had only been a few weeks, Rey felt like she was ballooning. But Ben determined that she was about only halfway through the pregnancy. She couldn't imagine getting any bigger than she already was. But then, she had always been a skinny girl and was still trying to adjust to the changes to her body.

“Ben!”

She started panicking, which only made Ben panic too. “Is something wrong?” 

“I...I dunno. I think it's my stomach.” She pulled Ben's hand to feel and his concerned frown vanished, replaced instead with a smile. “Rey, it's nothing wrong. That's the baby.”

“It is?”

“Yeah and it's kicking.” He took Rey's other hand so she could feel it for herself. It was stronger than the flutter of butterflies and forceful to.

And with that moment, the two of them seemed less fearful and more cautiously optimistic. There was nothing left for them to do now but to make preparations. Ben continued to keep vigil over the signal fire in case a plane or a boat were to come. But as the months passed on (and Rey's belly button was now sticking out), it became apparent that they had to prepare for their worst outcome.

Ben never ventured into the jungle further than the nearest freshwater source. He laid traps for animals so that Rey had plenty to eat. The whispers and the hum failed to make anymore appearances. Still, Ben found himself unable to sleep most nights (even with his wife by his side) until he was certain that the strange happenings in the jungle would not disturb them further.

Rey's belly was at its peak. There were no clothes to fit her other than an oversized t-shirt that was decaying into rags. Every night now, she had to get up in the middle of the night to go behind the house. The baby was putting too much pressure on her bladder as Ben said it would.

It didn't help that it was the colder season on the island. Leaving Ben's warmth just to pee made things stressful. The last thing she needed was to start having the baby like this.

In her chill, she thought she was hallucinating the strange harmonic tone coming from behind her. Then her arm started to hurt. Looking down, she realized the pain came from the strange markings on her arm which never faded away like she hoped they would. She looked back in the direction of the forest. Her eyes must be playing tricks because she thought she could see a strange white mist further inward.

She was already too far into the forest, trying to track the mist, when she realized she had forgotten Ben's promise. 

Her curiosity was not worth breaking a promise.

She turned to head back and nearly jumped at the shadow infront of her.

The shadow walked towards Rey. To her surprise, it took on the form of a child...a small frail child, with dark skin and covered in what seemed like white paint.

Was this...was this a native? She had never seen them. She only heard of them. Or perhaps this was a vision. Ben claimed he was seeing them. Was this what he warned her about?

The child reached out a hand. Rey stared at it for what seemed like an eternity before she finally accepted it. Then the child pulled Rey back into the jungle, away from the house. She cradled her belly with her other arm and they traveled toward the strange white mist, which seemed to get further and further from them as they walked. Her eyes became drowsy from the ongoing serenade of the strange hum.

Back at the house, Ben was still fast asleep unaware that the jungle had now become a black and silent void.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't go into the light, Rey!


	11. The Will of The Island

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this chapter was meant to be longer as in a bunch more stuff was happening (and has been written) but I'm still not yet through writing and need more time to work on that latter fraction of what was to be this entire chapter. So you're getting 2/3 of chap 11. With the next chap being much shorter (but it will be funner than this chap). We're near the end of our story btw. I wanna finish up by early May before my vacay. So I'm thinking 2 more chaps to go?
> 
> Sorry (somewhat) for the weirdness this chap does contain. Shouldn't surprise you, though. You saw how I ended the last one, right?

The winds changed. The air was getting colder.

Ben shifted half-asleep, hoping to feel for Rey's warmth only to feel nothing. Even with eyes closed, he knew that Rey was likely around back using the facilities.

But the chill of the night went on. Ben grew impatient, then worried.

How long had Rey gotten up? His mind struggling with that question, Ben would finally open his eyes, and stumbled out of the house to investigate.

He did not expect to find the back of the house empty.

“Rey?” He called out. “REY?!”

After scouring the surrounding beach, Ben tried looking for footprints but there were none outside of where she normally went to squat. 

That left only the jungle. In Rey's condition, it wasn't really possible for her to go in there even if she really wanted to. She wouldn't be able to get very far, especially on this night where there was no moon, no stars. It was pitch black within the island's core even as he took one step in.

And then the whispers came...more ominous than they ever were before.

“No...”

Ben knew. Somehow, he knew that the whispers and his wife's disappearance were connected.

He hurried back to the house to grab a couple of Rey's handmade weapons. Then he lit a torch. Though in the jungle on this night, it would provide him very little guidance.

 

“Slow down,” Rey begged with the child. “I can't see anything.” She couldn't understand how the little girl pulling her could see through nothing. Rey was normally adept at the jungle at night, but not when she was practically blind and nearly tripping on roots. She feared walking smack dab into a tree. Yet so far, the only branches she felt grabbed at the rugged shirt she wore. Eventually it became nothing more than scrap fabric barely clinging to her.

“We should go back,” she finally told her. But of course, the girl was silent and still pulling Rey further in. 

Soon, Rey's knees would buckle under the weight of the baby. The native child let go of her hand and Rey dropped onto thankfully soft ground. The white paint on her face glowed providing Rey with her only visual. She was pointing at something tall and narrow, completely covered in vegetation.

The child was looking at Rey. And she knew she had to remove the greenery. There was something on the other side of it.

Rey reached out and starting pushing as much ivy away as she could. The plants were covering what seemed like a stone pillar. 

She could just barely see images painted on it, just like the ones at the temple. The one that stood out was that of a naked woman, big breasted like she had seen before and wide hips just like hers in a squatting position. She thought the woman was wearing some sort of large décor inbetween her legs. But the décor had a face.

When Rey looked closer she realized what it really was: a child's head. 

This was how Ben said it would happen. This was what it was going to look like.

Underneath the visual was a series of marks and circles that looked eerily familiar.

Her eyes went straight to her arm, straight to the mysterious spots that appeared months ago. In what little light there was, she tried to match what was on her arm to what was on the pillar.

A perfect match.

Rey was done with this. She fought the pain in her legs to get herself back up on her feet. “I'm leaving!” she said, scared but determined. She turned away and took two steps...

The pain came, like a raging fire, as bad as the worst cramp she had ever experience, if not more.

“No…,” she winced. Not now. Anytime but now! She couldn't do this here...not without Ben.

The air began to hum around her. The native girl offered Rey her hand again. Helpless to the pain in her body, she had no choice but to follow her past the pillar and into the temple.

The temple was dark, all except for a strange dimming light floating by the altar. A white mist...the same one that lured her from the safety of her home...the one place she wanted to be more than anywhere right now.

The temple became brighter, more illuminated as more misty light began to enter the temple surrounding Rey, bringing with them the melodic hum. The air around Rey became colder with their presence, especially the one mist that was now before her...stretching and taking on a shape...a human shape.

Rey struggled to escape the girl's grasp. She would fight her way out of this if she had to. 

But it would be of no use. Another wave of pain struck Rey, bringing her to her knees, infront of the glowing light, infront of the large face statue that seemed to be looking down on her. 

Rey could not hide her fear anymore when an old woman, shriveling woman with frizzy white hair and sagging breasts, appeared before her. Glowing in her translucent aura, the woman lifted a bony finger at Rey...speaking strange words she could not understand. 

The only word that Rey could try to make out from the old woman was “eva”. But she had no idea what that meant.

The native girl had in her hands a crown made of twigs and the rarest flowers Rey knew of on the island. The crown was placed on Rey's head and from that point forward, she knew she no longer had any control over her current situation. 

The woman now had a bowl in her hands and her fingers became coated in a black paste, smelling deep of ash. The paste was pressed against Rey's stomach and she nearly screamed from the icy touch. The woman ignored her, as she started drawing circles on her stomach with the paste, and continued to speak in her foreign tongue. 

All around her, Rey could hear voices echoing the strange words the old woman chanted, but she could see no other humans, only the mists. 

When the old woman was finish, a strange pattern of circles, almost like flowers had been painted over Rey's belly. The last of her shirt came apart, and Rey began to shiver. The cold was too much for her. The woman put her hands on Rey's shoulders, and continued her chant.

She was starting to feel dizzy now. Her nose was filled with a strange yet lovely scent. Her eyes became droopy as she took one look at the face statue ahead of her. For a moment, Rey could have sworn the statue's eyes were glowing.

The chanting had gotten louder and louder and once Rey closed her eyes, it was absolute silence…

...until the whispers. 

Rey could feel the air suddenly get warmer, wrapping itself over he body. It was strangely inviting and yet she could not open her eyes. The whispers spoke in the same tongue the old woman did, but this time, Rey was listening.

She could hear multiple voices speaking to her...calling to her.

_'Don't be afraid.'_

 

Ben had been walking through absolute darkness for who knows how long. He had no idea where he was going, or if he could even get anywhere, when he was colliding with so many trees.

The whispers stopped a while ago. But he could hear chanting. It wasn't possible but after everything Ben had experience on the island, he was willing to believe. He kept his ears sharp, and made his way towards the source.

As the chanting got louder, he knew he was close. He thought he could even see a glow in the distance.

“Eva…”

The word echoed throughout the jungle in an eery tone. Ben's torch came across a familiar cauldron and he realized he was back at the temple. He lit the cauldron and used its fire to find and light the next one, and then another and another, until he could finally make sense of his surroundings.

He started to hear was sounded like Rey's voice.

“Rey?!”

He could hear her saying something, but couldn't make out what. Nor could he see her, as only part of the temple had been lit…

...until he got to a cauldron revealing the altar, and Rey swaying on her knees wearing only a strange flower crown on her head.

“Rey!”

Ben dropped everything and ran over to her side. She hadn't noticed him. She was still muttering strange words with her eyes closed. The second Ben touch her, he was shocked by how cold she felt and how pale she looked.

“We're getting out of here,” said Ben. But given how big Rey was now, moving her was going to be a difficult task.

Finally, Rey strange mutterings stopped. Yet she became unconscious falling back into Ben's arms.

“REY! REY, WAKE UP!”

Her eyes opened wide, she let out a gasp, as if waking from a nightmare. 

“Rey?”

She was looking around, confused by the silence. No more whispers, no more chants. And then she looked up to Ben. He looked horrified. “Ben?”

He didn't know what question to ask her first. But then Rey asked, “Where are they?”

“What? Who?”

“The people...” Rey was weakly moving her head back and forth, and noticing the eery silence. Ben seemed to the be the only other soul present. “The island people. They were just here.”

“There's no one here, Rey.”

She looked over at her baby bump. The strange markings that were placed there had vanished. She pushed herself up. “No, that's not...” 

She paused.

Then came a horrifying scream. Then came a sudden burst from her opening and a surge of an unknown liquid spilling out.

“Shit.” Shit was right. 

It was time. It was finally time. It was going to happen here and there was nothing more that either of them could do about it.

Ben dragged her so he could lean her against the damn face statue, only because it was the nearest thing for support.

“We have to do this now, Rey.”

“NO! NO!”

“I'll help you. You can do this! Remember when I taught you yoga?”

She did, but all that time they had spent in preparation for this was not enough in her mind. It was hurting too much for her to think of anything.

“I can't…!”

She kept screaming every minute. How naive she had been. She now understood why all this time, Ben was both saddened and terrified at the prospect of a baby. He told her it would hurt. But this...this wasn't what she had expected. She didn't know her body could stretch like this...could endure so much pain.

Ben was feeling helpless, completely helpless. He had no medical knowledge but he had watched enough TV, he hoped, to have some understanding as to what to do. They were on their own.

“I'm gonna tell you when to push.”

Every second passing by them was becoming agony. Rey couldn't take anymore of this. Ben was concentration on the opening between her legs.

“One more, Rey,” he told her. “Give it all you got!”

“No!” She was shaking her head and sobbing uncontrollably. “Please!”

“I know…,” he told her. “It's almost over, Rey. You're so close! Please, just one more push...the biggest one you can give me.”

No matter what Rey would try and do to resist, her body was compelling her to obey Ben's command. She found herself wanting to get this over with...begging to the island god she now leaned against to let this be the last. She knew now that she had always been at the island's mercy. 

Her scream pierced the jungle of all other noise. She ended up falling to the ground on one side, feeling the mud blend with her tears and sweat. As she lied there, she could spot in the grass two rotting skulls, one bigger than the other. They had to have been there for many years.

And Rey knew.

The old woman, the child, they were never here, not physically.

A strange new noise caught her attention, a soft wailing that could not have come from any animal.

“We did it,” she heard Ben. He placed a hand on her shoulder while she was lying there struggling to breathe. “Rey?”

Ben managed to pull Rey up. She wiped the mud from her face to see him holding something in his other arm. She thought at first a doll, but it wasn't noises and movements she knew couldn't be. And it looked so soft and wet, and a small mess of hair on the head (dark like Ben's). Rey reached a finger and a tiny hand, the tiniest hand she had ever seen wrapped itself around it.

Tiny hands, tiny feet, tiny everything. This...this really was a baby. She had a strange tube attached to her belly, which Ben had cut off with a dagger. Rey realized the rest of the tube was now resting in between her legs. She was a horrendous mess, physically and emotionally.

“Take her,” said Ben.

Her. That was what went through Rey's mind, that she didn't notice Ben trying to position the baby in Rey's arms so the child's face was right on her breast. “What are you...oh!”

The feel of how squishy and vulnerable this child was in Rey's arms was weird enough. It was even weirder how her cries stopped and how she was now sucking on her nipple. She could feel the liquid she had been leaking for months now being sucked away. That would explain that.

The cold had thankfully gone. And Rey knew so did the whispers and the island people. They had been gone for a very long time. Only their spirits had been here and nothing more.

“Rey, what's that?”

Rey looked down, and noticed a small black circle on the side of her hip. It faded enough to be mistaken for a birthmark but she knew it wasn't.

It was the last of what the spirits would leave behind. 

 

______________________________________________

 

“What happened back there?”

Ben had waited to ask Rey once they were back in the safety of their home, while she rested in bed with the baby in her arms. 

She was reluctant to explain anything to him. She was also still tired and scared. For some reason, Rey also felt horribly moody. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” Ben assured her. He knew of whispers and visions. He would believe anything Rey told him.

“I was lured there,” she told him. “The island was...the island was speaking to me.”

“Speaking to you?”

Rey nodded. “It told me, when the island people were dying they thought if they died, so would the island. So they...they placed a spell: the last one to live would not die. That they would bring life to the island again.” She looked at the wriggling little infant. “It was me, Ben. All this time, I was the last one alive. Don't you see? The island wanted us to have this baby.” She looked at the marking on her arm which were slowly fading away for the first time since she received them. “This on my arm...it was a message.”

“A message?”

“ _The Will of the Island_ , that's what it said. This was all meant to be.”

Ben never thought about the strange coincidences until now. The temple was where Rey first bled, where they consummated their marriage, and now where their daughter had been born. The powers that be on this rock had been pulling all the stops to make sure they came together, that they created life for the island to survive.

“What happens now?” Ben asked her.

She gave him a weak smile. “We don't have to worry. They've gone on. We've done our part.”

The baby was getting sleepy. Ben cursed himself for never thinking to build a crib. He thought they would be off this island long before her existence. 

“Ben?” Rey asked him. “Do you know what 'eva' means?”

Ben should not have been surprised that that was the same word he had heard in the jungle. “I'm not sure. I think it might mean 'life'.”

They looked at each other. The question of what to name the child had never came up. 

But now it seemed the island already had one in mind.


	12. Little Tarzan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our now trio of babies have a new trial (or two) to face...just because...I also suck at fluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer's block, my friends. It can be a little bitch! Plus work and other junk was keeping me away as well. This is the first weekend in forever that I was able to relax and sit down and write and I did it all in a day...you're welcome. :)
> 
> I did come up with a better ending than the lazy one I had originally planned. Still just a couple more chaps to go just about.

“Mmm. Ben...” 

Ben half-heartedly ignored Rey calling to him. She was no more awake than he was as he rolled over trying to ignore the constant mewling from inside the house.

“I think it's your turn,” she mumbled.

“She's hungry, Rey. You know I can't help with that.”

Rey sighed and lazily crawled her way over to where Eva was lying and throwing a fit. Ben had managed to make a pathetic looking crib from twigs and palm-leaves, but it was the best comfort they could provide for the little one.

It was only a few days since Eva had entered their lives, yet when Rey picked her up it was like holding a water balloon, so soft and yet so fragile. Thankfully, Eva managed to calm down having familiarized herself with her mother's touch and smell.

Mother. That was a title Rey never imagined for herself all her years alone on the island. The best thing about Eva to her was that she was another human being...someone she could see and feel and eventually be able to have conversations with. It fascinated her how much Eva resembled a bit of her and a bit of Ben all at once.

They had gotten lucky with the birth, but there were new-found anxieties to be had. Ben had little experience with babies. He got to hold one once or twice for a photo op but it never went beyond that. Rey's knowledge was even less and they were both finding out very quickly how needy a child Eva could be. Neither Ben or Rey got much sleep together since one of them had be up every couple of hours to attend to her. They couldn't figure out much of what she need other than constant feedings and the occasional change of her animal-skin diaper. Rey had been worried sick prior to birth about how they were going to feed her without milk or a bottle. It still felt strange to her how her own body became the solution to that problem, but Ben assured her that was perfectly normal too.

Once Eva was well fed and ready for more sleep, Rey crawled back to Ben's bedside but she was no longer tired. She had another need, one that hadn't been appeased in months. She kissed Ben's neck until his movements signaled to her that he was awake.

“It's been a while, hasn't it?” she whispered to him.

“Since what?” Ben asked.

His wife leaned over with innocent eyes. “Since...you know?”

Ben did know. They had resisted the urge the make love again ever since it all blew up in his face. They had been so focused on preparing and surviving for Eva's arrival for that thought to come as only a tease in their minds. Their daughter was here now, but their challenges were far from over. And Ben needed to keep Rey well so that Eva could be well. He had even improved on his hunting skills during this time to make sure of that.

“I don't think we should,” he said with a nervous smile. The temptation was strong...very strong...but he wasn't expecting to come across a box of condoms anytime soon. And that was enough for his decision.

Rey chuckled. “Do you think that maybe the island wants us to have more than one baby?”

“I think we would have gotten a sign.”

That much had been true. In the days that had passed, their dreams were no longer haunted by visions. The jungle was calm and serene. It was a strange sense of normalcy that was foreign and abnormal to them.

They didn't had to worry so much about the dangers of the island. Their world was now centered around Eva and her survival.

______________________________________________ 

Ben felt calmer and more relaxed once Eva was at a stage where she was plump and learning to crawl. Everyday since she had been born, Ben had been carving a line into a stone wall.

“What are you doing?” Rey asked him.

“Keeping track. If we ever get off this island, we can use this to figure out when Eva's birthday is.”

Rey went silent. It seemed like she was going to say something but Eva cries were summoning her away.

A few days later, Ben asked Rey to come with him into the jungle. As dangerous as it seemed to have Eva join them, the jungle had quickly become the child's favorite place. She was constantly turning her head to coo and squee in wonder at all of the plants and creatures that would run away from her. Eva's favorite were the small colorful birdies that would fly above her head. 

“Rey...you don't when your birthday is, do you?” asked Ben.

“No,” she said sadly. “I wish I did.”

“We could make today your birthday,” said Ben. He presented to Rey a half fruit shell and jabbed a stick in the center. Then he lit it.

Rey smiled. “How cute. We don't need to do this.”

“Just make a wish and blow on it before it burns.”

Eva was already getting grabby and curious about the lit stick so Rey blew it out without having made a wish.

“I have a present too.” Ben took something out of his pocket so small that the whole of his hand easily kept it from view until he revealed it to her.

Rey's eyes widened. The excitement on her face could not be contained. “Oh my god! Where did you get that?!”

“Found it in an old compartment. It's mostly sugar so it''s well preserved.” Ben looked at Rey, who seemed almost on the verge of tears. “Do you remember...”

“I think I do,” she said.

“Then you should have it.”

From Ben's hand, Rey took a piece of peppermint candy. “You'll need to unwrap it first,” said Ben.

Once she did, Rey hesitated before putting the sweet in her mouth. “Mint...” Rey smiled wider than Ben had ever seen. “It's mint. I...oh!”

It must have been her own clumsiness that did it. The peppermint had accidentally tumbled out of her mouth and disappeared into the sand. A small minor mishap yet Ben and Rey had never felt more devastated.

“I'm sorry.”.

“It's okay,” Rey assured him. But the silence that followed showed that she was clearly upset as he was. “We should go back.”

She picked up Eva who seemed to be focus on a space of nothing, opposite of where the candy fell. Unlike her parents, the child was happy and giggling.

“It's strange, isn't it?” she said. “Like she sees something that we're not.”

They continued their trek back to the beach. Eva looked over her shoulder to smile at the faces of the natives who had been entertaining her all day.

Her undeveloped little mind couldn't understand why she could see what her parents couldn't.

______________________________________________ 

Ben was listening to cries that he dismissed as Eva's. They were far too soft than her usual fits. When he turned over in bed, he could see Eva still asleep in her bed.

He pushed himself up, realizing that Rey was sobbing in a corner of the house.

“Rey?” He came up behind. “What's wrong?” He wondered if she was still upset about the candy...something so small yet Ben now understood how such a little thing could have so much meaning in her life.

There was nothing he could do other than to embrace her. She did her best to wipe away the tears from her eyes.

“I...I just realized something.”

“What?” 

“Ben...if something were to happen…,” she choked on her own words. “If something were to happen to us, then Eva...she'll be alone, Ben. She'll be all alone here like I was.”

Rey continued to shake and sob. It was a terrible, yet true point. The three of them on this island, they could get by for now. But they couldn't be there for their child forever and the future was too uncertain. No matter what the island wanted from them, there was no future for Eva here. 

They spent all their time waiting and hoping for something to happen...for something to change. Ben had been on the island for so long, that it was a fate he was willing to accept. Thinking about what he had to go back to...parents that he didn't care for and didn't return said care...a boss who never treated him exceptionally well...a life that felt so meaningless and hollow. He believed that he and Rey could go at it on this island forever. But they were still mortal and now they had Eva to think about.

His daughter would never have the things babies like her should have, toys...clothing...other people. Even the essentials they could provide couldn't last forever. Eva was too vulnerable here. 

His daughter...his wife...deserved better than this. They deserved a normal life, one where they didn't had to work so hard to make it to the next day.

Before the sun came up the following morning, Ben went into the jungle and started gathering wood to make planks. He knew nothing of raft building. It could take years to build a sturdy one for all three of them for all he knew.

But for his family, his island family, he was going to try. He would do whatever it would take to give them a chance at a future.

______________________________________________ 

Once Rey caught on to what he was doing, she did what little she could do to help. The marks that Ben made on the wall had become too numerous to count, for Eva was now learning to stand on her own feet. The parents had given up on diapers at that point, and just let her run around in a mere rat-skin loincloth.

“What are you doing?!” 

Ben nearly panicked at the sight, Rey and Eva were on a tree branch more than six feet from the ground. Rey was supporting her daughter to keep her standing.

“We're taking a break,” she said. Finding and gathering wood in the jungle had become a thankless chore. She didn't see what the big deal us. Eva seemed to be having the time of her tiny little life.

“You can't have Eva up there! She'll fall!”

“I'm teaching her to climb, Ben. She needs to learn how to find food, doesn't she?”

Ben's concern seemed to fade as a small smile formed. He shook his head. “Rey, don't you want her to be a bit more civilized than this?”

“Civilized? You're saying I'm not?”

“Of course not. What I mean is, there should be more in her life than just surviving. If we ever get off this island, you don't want people seeing her as a little Tarzan.”

Rey looked confused. “What's a Tarzan?”

“A very famous story...about a man who was raised by monkeys.”

“Eva and I are not monkeys,” Rey giggled. 

“I know,” said Ben. He just didn't want his daughter's first word to be some form of Tarzan yell. At her stage in life though, that was becoming more and more of a possibility. 

“Fine, I suppose you can teach her the way you taught me...all that reading and such. But she still needs to learn how to care for herself.”

They took a moment to watch Eva happily crawling on the branch. 

A sudden rumble came rushing beneath Ben's feet. The branch his wife and child were on shook violently. Rey's motherly instinct kicked in to quickly grab Eva with one arm. Her other, wrapped around the tree trunk.

The shaking lasted a few seconds. When it stopped, the animals of the forest started sounding restless. Eva began to wail uncontrollably.

“Rey!” Ben rushed to the tree where the girls were still holding on. “Are you alright?!”

It took a long time for Rey to let go of the tree. She handed Eva to her husband and then cautiously made her way to the safety of the ground. “What...what was that?”

“I think...I think it was an earthquake.”

“An...earthquake?”

“You've never had an earthquake here before?”

“I think I have,” she said. “But nothing like that.”

In the back of Ben's mind, something did not feel right about what they had just experienced. Of course, in whatever part of the world they were in, this would seem like an expected natural event. Birds were circling madly above them. He would silently pray that it was nothing. That the worse was over.

“No more for the day,” said Ben. “Let's go back to the beach.”

______________________________________________ 

They went to bed that night still shaken in many ways. Deep into their sleep however, the shaking would wake them from slumber.

When Rey and Ben opened their eyes, it was like waking into a nightmare. The walls of their house began to sway back and forth. Bit of their roof were falling in. The ground's shaking tossed them, almost violently from where they slept.

“Eva!”

The baby's cries could barely heard in the chaos and there was the darkness to contend with. Once Rey got to Eva shielding her with her body, the shaking stopped. The house was now in disarray. Parts of the roof were open to a starless sky.

“Holy shit!” Ben pushed away the fallen parts of the their home to get to his family. “Let's get outta here!”

In the cover of night, they couldn't see what had happen, they could only hear the animals louder than they ever were before and Eva crying in terror. They were grateful to only come out with a few scratches and bruises.

The earthquake that stirred them some sleep was far worse than what they experienced hours ago.

“Ben...”

Ben tried to calm Rey down until they heard the faint rumble in the jungle, like no animal. For a moment they thought maybe the jungle monster had returned. 

When dawn came, they had the light to climb up the nearby cliff on the beach to inspect the damage. So far, the jungle, from where they could see seemed typically intact. No obvious damage.

“Rey, look over there.” Ben point at a hill, the biggest one they could see. A speck of light could be seen off of it that was glowing a violent orange.

“A fire?” Rey asked.

The light was growing at a snail's pace. It seemed to creep off the side of the hill starting from near the top. A tiny bit of smoke formed from the same spot and a horrible realization caused Ben to turn pale.

“That's not a fire...that's...that's lava!”

A volcano. Fuck! The hill was a volcano.

Rey thankfully knew what they were. She remembered people talking about them, joking about how they were lucky to be on an island that didn't have one.

But they were wrong. She never knew that a volcano was hiding in plain sight all these years, lying in wait. “Maybe, it's over?” 

“Rey, that shaking was a sign. It means an eruption is coming.”

“It's not gonna go that far, is it? If we stay on the beach...”

“It's not just the lava we need to worry about,” Ben explained. “The smoke from that eruption will be massive, enough to cover the whole island. We won't be able to breathe.” Ben could not hide the truth from her of what was to be their fate. “It's gonna poison us.”

Rey clutched Eva much tighter then. The parents stood in the face of inevitable death...one that would consume all life on the island whole. With work on the raft only a small fraction complete, they had no means to escape what was coming.

The worse part was the unknowing. Death did not work on a schedule.

______________________________________________ 

“Please, Ben.”

“We have to see. I'll have a better idea of how much time we have.”

“Then let us come with you!”

“No,” he said. “You'll be safer on the beach.”

“You said so yourself, that we'll die no matter what! If that thing goes off, I want us all to be together!”

In truth, Ben didn't want to go at it alone either, but he needed to know. They both needed to know when the end was coming. He wish he could stay on the beach and hold Rey in his arms until the moment came, but it was now or never.

“I'll be back before sundown. I promise, we'll be together for it.” He consumed Rey's entire face with kisses. Then he gave little Eva a kiss on her forehead, praying this wouldn't be the last time he would see his little girl. 

His time on the island had thankfully granted him a better scope of the geography. He had come to know his way around as well as Rey did. Rey didn't travel the hills very often. She would have been as equally blind as he was now, struggling to get close without being exposed to the new dangers. 

He opted for climbing another hill that was close by. So close, that he could feel the heat from the creeping lava. It traveled much further now than from what he saw from further distance. It would reach ground in another day or two, he reckoned. From there, it was only a matter of time before it would reach the beach. 

Only faint rumblings were coming from the hill at the moment. The smoke was getting larger than he had anticipated. Ben could feel his lungs becoming ill from it. He had to quickly run down the hill just to breathe again. He knew once the top came off, the smoke and ash would cover the island in complete darkness.

The fear of it all made him nauseous. Three days maximum. That was his final conclusion.

Now was the time to get back to Rey and Eva...to keep his promise to them that they would see this through together...that none of them would die alone.

______________________________________________ 

Every second on the beach was agony. Rey sat watching Eva innocently play in the sand, as if everything were normal. But her mind was too focused on what she couldn't see. It would be naive of her to hope the Ben would be back in a mere few hours. But if sundown were to come and Ben not yet returned, she wouldn't know what to do.

Eva stopped what she was doing and looked out towards the ocean. She was due for her first word anytime now. But she all she could say was “AAH!”

Her “AAH!” got Rey's attention. Eva was waving her arms up and down in excitement. Rey didn't think much of it, till she looked at the ocean...at what her daughter was seeing.

Out there, in the blue sky above, was a black dot, getting closer and closer. It was followed by a strange unnatural noise. It seemed like a bird but instead of wings, it had an unusual spinning thing on its top.

Rey ran over to Eva to get a closer look. This was clearly no animal but a massive object. The flying object was getting closer and closer...until it was larger than Rey herself. It brought with it a breeze that nearly knocked her to the ground blowing sand everywhere. The volume of noise it contained, which was obviously mechanical, forced Rey to cover her ears.

The massive flying object was flying just a dozen feet above her, until it came to land on the far end of the visible beach. 

She was slowly remembering. It was something she had only dreamed up. 

It almost brought her to tears. She couldn't wait for Ben to see.

It had finally happened. After all these years, someone had finally come.

She picked Eva up and tried to get closer. The strange spinning thing on top was slowing down. A door oddly enough began to open one side.

Rey believed she was going to faint, at the sight of a pair of feet that took its first steps onto her island.

______________________________________________ 

Ben half struggled, half ran to get back home as quick as he could. The sun was hanging low. He was hearing strange rumbles as he got closer to the beach. He almost thought he could feel a breeze coming from the direction of the beach.

When he finally arrived, his relief turned into shock. He froze at the sight of the beach.

It all seemed off. The sand had shifted in the most unusual way. It wasn't smooth like it normally was. There were dips and hills and unusual prints that he couldn't recognize.

Worse yet, there was no sign of his wife or daughter.

“Rey?!”

There was no reply. Nor was there any indication that she went into the jungle.

The collapsed house still remained as it was. He didn't think Rey would take Eva in there. But there were clouds gathering in the sky. Perhaps she knew it was about to rain soon.

He got to the entry of the house. There was no greeting, no embrace of relief at his return.

“Rey?”

The being in his house was not that of his wife. He thought it was a vision, but the man was sitting there in the flesh and Ben knew it...a man he never thought he would see again. 

Ben didn't know how his employer had found him, but then Snoke was a powerful man who never gave up and wanted what he wanted.

“Hello, Kylo Ren.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love cliffhangers. Sue me!
> 
> Also get out Tumblr and go outside, children. That website is the cesspool of humanity and critical thinking.


	13. Seas Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not responsible for any emotional distress that WILL come from reading this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We near the end of our story. The next chapter will be the last. 
> 
> If you've been with this since the beginning or just started reading lemme just say THANK YOU! I love each and every one of my readers and I will miss this fic but this was as much as I could come up it. I apologize for the constant delays in updates. I had a much lazier ending in mind but I think this one is much much better.

He could only stand there agasp. The hope that this was only a dream, a vision...like the one of him he saw in the jungle before...was short-lived. Snoke was sitting in what remained of his home looking rather stoic and not very surprised to see him. 

Ben struggled to find the words. “How…how are you here?”

Snoke chuckled. “My boy, did you believe that I would leave you for dead after hearing about the crash?”

“You were looking for me all this time?”

“Indeed...with everything at my disposal. Two long agonizing years of searching the ocean, finding nothing but dead bodies and wreckage. And yet, your body was the only one we never found a trace of. That was when I knew...I knew you were alive. I had the entire ocean searched...thousands of miles in all directions. Had we not detected a series of earthquakes in the region, we would have overlooked this measly rock you've been stuck on.”

' _Two years_ ', Ben thought to himself. He'd been on this island with Rey for that long? As the thought came to him, Ben's shock turned to panic. “Where are they?!” 

“The mother and child? They're safe on my ship, not too far from here. I noticed the child's resemblance to you straight away.” Snoke started to laugh. “My, my, you've been quite a busy man, haven't you? But I suppose one must find a way to keep themselves occupied here.”

“Couldn't you have waited for me before taking them?”

“She fainted.”

Ben froze. “What?”

“As soon as our chopper landed here, the woman fainted at the sight of us. Do you think I would just leave them here on the beach in such a state? The medic on my ship is looking after them now. I volunteered to wait behind while the chopper refuels. Now only one question remains. Will you be joining me when it returns?”

Ben knew Snoke's phrasing wasn't an invitation to get on the ship, knowing it was exactly what he wanted. Nothing about this situation seemed remotely like a rescue. And he knew in his past dealings with Snoke, that there was always some form of catch. “What do you want?”

“You remember well,” Snoke said with approval. “I only desire that you return to work for me.”

“And what of my parents back home?”

“What about them? As I recall, you cut them from your life years ago as proof of your loyalty, did you not? Or...perhaps, you were expecting them to be the ones to find you?”

Ben quietly admitted it was a fleeting thought. Time on an island could change a man, and there were times when he hoped that his father's ship would come and he could take Rey and Eva back and they could all be one happy family and forget that he ever had to work for Snoke. 

“Kylo Ren...”

He didn't know why but Ben cringed at Snoke calling him that now. 

“Your family believes you to be dead. It is foolish to think that they would have put any amount of effort into looking for you, into having any faith in your survival, that I had. Is that the kind of family you want to return to?”

As much as Ben hated his parents, the idea that they no longer thought of him hurt. There was no reaching out to them during his time here, believing that he would die on the island. Now that he had a chance to get back, did they matter anymore? Perhaps Snoke had been right. He didn't need them. He still had Rey and Eva and he needed to think about them now.

The ground beneath the two men shook but Snoke seemed unconcerned. “The volcano is due to erupt very soon. You should be grateful that I found you when I did.”

They stepped outside of the house upon hearing a whirring noise. Ben saw the shiny black helicopter approach the beach and settle on the nearby sand. The blades continue to spin, a sure sign that Snoke had no more plans to settle here. “Shall we?” 

There wasn't much choice in the matter. Getting to Rey and Eva was Ben's only priority. There would be time to think about Snoke's job offer, he thought. 

As they got into the helicopter and Ben felt himself being lifted away, the realization would finally hit. They we're leaving...they were being rescued. For Rey and Eva, it would mean the entire world. They wouldn't have to fight for survival anymore. 

They wouldn't be alone anymore.

Ben shook with excitement and concern upon spotting the large black ship. He recognized the First Order logo on the bow straight away. His eyes then turned to the landing pad in a desperate attempt to spot Rey and Eva waiting for them but all he could spot where crew people in their familiar black suits.

Snoke stepped out and one of the crewman hurried to his side, yelling about a problem. Ben stretched his legs as he got out still trying to cope with what was happening.

“Well find them!” Snoke yelled. He then turned to Ben. “The woman we brought on board...it appears she awoke and is causing a havoc. She attacked my medic and is hiding somewhere on the ship!”

Fuck. Rey must have freaked out upon waking up off the island, surrounded by people who weren't him. “You scared her! She's hasn't been around people in so long.”

“Then do something about it,” Snoke commanded Ben. “Help to find them!”

Ben sprung into action. He had only been on a ship like this once before and his memory was very vague. He tried to ignore the stunned faces of the people he ran past, shocked upon seeing the familiar face of Kylo Ren. Most of the First Order must have also thought him to have perished. 

He had to think. Rey was in a foreign place with no knowledge of anything. Where would she and Eva go? He remembered Rey's tendency to run off into the jungle, where it was warmer and darker.

His eyes turned to a series of stairs...leading to the boiler rooms down below. Ben pushed aside anyone getting in the way as he descended. The heat consumed him but the sound of crying pushed him ahead. It was Eva's voice...echoing through the metal walls.

“REY!”

There was a pause and then… “Ben?!”

“Rey!”

They continued to call for each other, until he saw them. Rey was cowering under a set of steel stairs, with Eva crying uncontrollably in her arms. They were both stained with dirt and a bit of blood, with sweat glistening off their skin. 

Rey was looking rather unhinged, but the relief was heavy upon seeing Ben's familiar face. She clung to him refusing to let go. “Oh Ben! I...I don't what happened...I thought I was dreaming...” She continued rumbling incoherently while Ben tried to calm her down.

“It's okay, Rey,” he assured her.

“Where, where are we?”

“We're on a ship. They're here to rescue us, Rey.”

Her eyes widened. “Rescue? We're...we're leaving the island?”

“We're already off the island! We're going to back to land!”

For moment it seemed that Rey would faint again, and not just from the heat. Ben quickly helped her and Eva to get up and make their way up the stairs and out of the boilers. The shock was still with Rey. It would be a while before that went away.

______________________________________________ 

Ben could not feel any sense of relief until they were finally settled in their own little cabin on the ship...just him, Rey and Eva. Outside of his window, Ben could see the ocean and no sign of the island.

While Rey and Eva were asleep in the bed, all Ben could think about was all the things they would do when they got back. What happened today reminded Ben that Rey was going to have a far more difficult time adjusting, new people and places were now the biggest challenge, and living in the city where Ben originally lived would be too overwhelming.

The country, he thought. They would move there, peaceful, away from water...someplace cool where Rey wouldn't be constantly reminded of the island. And she would adjust to civilization at a snail's pace but Ben would help her. He would always help her.

She was still his wife, nothing back home would ever change that.

A knock at the door disrupted all his thoughts. Ben opened the door a crack to see Snoke's eyes peering in. “So...has your decision been made?”

“I...I need more time,” Ben pleaded.

“Think about what I'm offering you, Kylo Ren. It's not everyday I would offer you your old position after returning from the dead.”

Ben turned his back toward his sleeping girls. “And what about them?”

“You'll be able to provide for them plenty. The three of you will have to remain inconspicuous. Can't let word get out that you survived the crash all this time, now can we? I'm sure they'll understand the complexity of the situation.”

But Ben knew better and he wasn't sure how he was going to explain to Rey what his life was like before he got to the island. The men could hear Rey stir in her sleep and she mumbled a soft “Ben”.

“Ben?” said Snoke. “Why did she call you Ben?”

“It's...the name I gave her.”

Snoke was getting angry. “I see now. Did you think you could escape me and hide on that island for the rest of your life, thinking I would never find you?”

“No,” said Ben. “No, I wasn't...”

“You know too much of the First Order's work, Kylo Ren. I'd hate to have to truly dispose of you, to count you among the others that perished. The girl knows too much as well. She's lucky my medic only has a few scratches from what happened today. But I don't think she can be trusted...”

“Don't…,” Ben pleaded once more. “Rey has nothing to do with us!”

It became clear that Snoke was not going to listen. Of all the people, why did they had to be found by him?

“You have until we reach the next port to make up your mind, which won't be long,” said Snoke. “If you say 'no', then you know what will need to be done.”

Once Snoke finally made his leave and disappeared down the hall, Ben dropped to his knees. This wasn't what he wanted for himself, or for his new family. He was foolish to think they could leave the island and build a new life for themselves without thinking of the past. They would never be truly safe or truly free, not from Snoke.

“Ben?” Rey had gotten up from bed and placed a hand on her husband's back. “What's wrong?”

“Alot of things,” he said truthfully.

“You know these people who rescued us? Why did that man call you 'Kylo Ren'?”

' _She heard_ ', Ben thought. There could be no hiding the truth from her anymore. He would turn to face her. “Rey, there's a lot you don't know about my life before I crashed onto that island. For one thing I wasn't always call Ben. I mean, it's my birth name, but when I came to work for the First Order, I changed it.”

“Why?” she asked him. 

“It's just...I wanted to get away from my family...my parents...I thought I had that with Snoke. It was also to protect them too in away. No point in getting them involved.”

“But they're good people, aren't they? They rescued us!”

“No,” Ben said truthfully. “They might have rescued us but they aren't good people, Rey. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, you and Eva were dragged into this. The work I've done for the First Order, it involved...” Ben took a deep breath. “...it involved killing people. I'm not proud of it. I thought I would want to go back if I ever got found, but things are different now, Rey. You and Eva are all that matter, now. I want to forget. I don't want to go back to that...”

He didn't realize that he had been grabbing Rey by the arms while he was telling her all of this and he was starting to break. Rey did his best to calm him. “Ben?”

He looked up at her and looked as if he was on the verge of crying.

“Do you think maybe we were better off dying on the island?”

“Rey, don't think like that! What about Eva?”

“At least we would have been together. I mean, when I woke up on this ship, I was so lost and confused. I kept screaming for you but no one would listen to me and I didn't know if these people were real or in my own head. I don't think I could ever be a normal person if we got home. I...I miss the island.”

A sad smile spread across Ben's face. “So do I.”

“I wish we could just leave...maybe even find a new island for us.”

In any other circumstance, Ben would have thought leaving to be madness. But it became clear now that they weren't safe on this ship. Even if Ben did decide to come back to Snoke, there was no guarantee that he would let Rey and Eva be. They were leverage now. 

And in that moment, Ben knew that he didn't want to go back. But time would run out when he would have to say “no” to Snoke and they would all pay when that time comes.

“Rey, I'm going outside for a bit,” said Ben. “I promise to be right back.”

He had to walk. He had to think. Ben traveled up and down the decks. The people that were running about earlier were already heading into their cabins for the night. Only the standard sounds of the boat moving through the ocean could be heard as well as a light wind.

He traveled to the back of the ship far where there wasn't a soul around, except for the basic ship equipment. His eyes turn to the edge of the ship and the small steel capsule that was attached to it.

Bingo.

He quickly but quietly made his way back to the cabin. 

“Rey, get Eva.”

Rey could sense the urgency, and was confused as Ben went to the closet to grab a couple of lifevests. “What? What's going on?”

“We're getting off the ship. But we need to be very quiet.”

With every step they took out of the cabin, they remained ever cautious, ever quiet. They could not risk any noise, especially not from Eva, waking anyone up. 

It took almost forever for them to get back on deck but there was much more ruckus than before. The wind had picked up and rope and other parts were clanging against the steel of the ship. 

They would be escaping in the middle of a storm. It could mean certain death. But this was their only chance. It was now or never.

Ben led his family through the complex mess of crates and material in the ship's sternside. 

“I need you to keep an eye out.”

The skies all dark and hazy, there was very little that Rey could see. The only source of light came from the front of the ship, the headlights that were piercing its way through the night. This was a good thing, Ben thought to himself. As long as the ship's crew were busy dealing with the weather, there would be no one to notice them sneaking off the back of the ship. 

He got to the small capsule he had found earlier. Then he freed it from the latches and pushed it over the ship, grabbing the rope it was attached to. The capsule landed in the water and after a few pulls of the rope, the steel casing came off and like a balloon, a tent-like life raft sprung out. They could ride out the storm away from the ship. By the time anyone realized they were gone, they would be lost to the ocean again. He knew the life raft would have water, rations, and signal flares inside. There's a chance for them to be found by someone else at any rate.

The wind was getting stronger, if they didn't get on that raft soon, it would float away without them.

Ben found the ship's emergency ladder and brought it down. Only a few feet between the ladder's end and the raft. They could make it. 

He gave one of the life vests he grabbed from the cabin to Rey. “Put it on. There's no telling...”

“Ben, I'm scared!”

“We can do this! You just have to do what I tell you.” Ben had to yell over the rumbling storm. “Take Eva and climb down. Get inside of the life raft and stay in there. I'll come as soon as I know you're both safe!”

Ben helped Rey to the ladder. It was nothing like climbing a tree but Ben urged her to pretend it was. It would make the process easier. Except it was difficult to climb down in a storm while holding onto Eva. Rey couldn't even see the raft at the bottom. Ben had to direct her while still holding onto the rope that kept the raft close.

Somewhere near the bottom rungs, Rey found she wasn't going to make a clean landing. She had no choice but to get into the water with Eva.

She didn't expect the current to be so strong.

“REY!”

Thankfully Rey managed to grab onto the edge of the raft. There was so much rain to contend with. She was blind trying to find it's opening. Her instincts told her to get Eva in. The little girl's wailing would not be heard in the storm.

Ben could barely see anything from where he stood. He had to fight off every urge in his body not to jump off the ship to get to them. It pained him. He had to hold onto the rope or they wouldn't make it.

He never felt more relief than he did seeing Rey get inside the raft.

They were both in now. Ben had little time to react and in his haste, he didn't even put on his own life-vest. There was no time for that now. The second he would have to release the rope, he would have to swim for it, too.

But something grasped him hard in the shoulder. The force caused him to loose grip of the rope until it disappeared over the ship's edge.

“Kylo Ren!”

Ben was turned around and facing Snoke. “You thought you could escape me.”

The moment Ben spotted the knife in Snoke's hand, he charged. Snoke pushed back hoping to strike Ben in the process. They were both like deer caught in their antlers. Ben could have easily overpowered an old man like Snoke in this situation, but the ship was starting to the tilt and the rain was impairing his senses. 

Eventually, the tilt was strong enough that it send Snoke colliding into Ben and they both tumbled overboard.

“BEN!!!”

Rey was forced to watch in horror the two men falling into the water, unable to see if they were coming up.

Ben and Snoke fell deep beneath the water's surface. Ben struggled to make his way up but it was clear that Snoke was holding on to his leg. He looked down. With what little light there was he could see blood escaping from Snoke's chest. The tumble must have caused Snoke to accidentally stab himself.

And yet the older man seemed determined to drag Ben down, but his hold on him got weaker and weaker, until there was no hold. A trail of blood would rise up while the drowned pale form of his employer sank further down into the oceans.

The sharks could have him, Ben hoped. It was what he deserved anyway.

Ben swam desperately up to the surface and took a huge breath. The storm was now all around him. Flashes of lightening. Massive wind. Endless rain.

The small glimpse of orange that was floating fast away from him was his end goal. He wouldn't be able to find the black ship in this mess anyway and no one even knew that they were gone.

“REY!”

Rey and Eva were being tossed around by the current inside of the raft.

“BEN!”

They kept calling for the other until Rey could see him swimming towards her. But every time Ben seemed like he was getting closer and closer to the ship, the current would push him back much further.

“NO!”

Rey tried to think fast. It was apparent that Ben could not swim forever. She had no means of getting Ben to her, nor did she had any means of getting to him.

All she had was the life vest she was wearing. So she quickly took it off and tossed it as far as she could in what was hopefully Ben's direction.

But Ben paid no attention to it. His eyes watched in horror as the wave raised the life raft up several feet high. Eva was close to tumbling out. They both were.

The wave came down. The life raft was still upright sending a massive splash.

Ben was being pushed back further by the effect. His arms and legs were getting weak. The moment had come...the moment he knew that he wasn't going to make it. The life raft was now unreachable. 

He was starting to sink.

**”BEN!!!!!!!!!!!”**

The waves continued to push Rey and Eva further and further away. Ben kept his eyes glue to the orange dot until it completely disappeared from his view. 

“Don't get out!” Ben cried out to no one who would hear. “Stay in there...” He repeated the last words over and over softly, praying, hoping that Rey would heed them. “Please, stay in there...”

His whole body was now in the ocean. He was too weak to even kick. He could feel the pull of the water sinking him further in.

He would close his eyes and think about the island, the beautiful island that he had called him for two years...Rey...Eva…

He would have given everything in the world just for the three of them to stay there forever.

But he could dream...one last dream before everything went dark.

Ben embraced the silence but a familiar voice seemed to be echoing around him.

_'Reach.'_

Why was he hearing that voice above all others?

_'Reach, Ben.'_

His mind tried to think. He had no memory of his mother ever calling to him like that, or maybe he had as a child. A mother's voice, he thought, was soothing a note to go outon.

_'Stretch out your arm and reach!'_

The command was stern but determined and this time Ben obeyed.

He lifted one hand out and felt something, a rope perhaps?

He opened his eyes and saw what he was grabbing…

...Rey's life vest…

In an instant, Ben was moving faster than he ever had. He found his energy again, somehow, as he kicked his way back up breaking through the water.

Air...glorious air. He took it all in, even as the storm was raging on around him.

And he held onto the vest. He grasped it, ignoring the conditions around him. He would ride out the currents into the night…

______________________________________________ 

The first light Ben would see was that of the rising sun. A sight he had seen so many times on the island. But this would be the most surreal of all of them.

The light was revealing land straight ahead.

The currents, now calmer than the night, before carried him to the beach. The sand was beautiful, it felt beautiful as his aching body came to lie upon it.

Ben would remain there for a few hours, allowing himself to finally rest. When he woke up again, it was now pure day time. 

The memory of last night, he prayed to be some horrible nightmare. It had to be, because when he looked up he saw a familiar looking structure along the edge of the beach.

This wasn't…

No, it couldn't be.

Ben finally got up and stumbled his way toward it.

He touched the walls. Everything was the same. Inside he saw the bed, the clothes, the pearl necklace he had given Rey, the one Eva loved to put in her mouth on occasion.

He found the stone with the notches he added everyday since his daughter's birth.

Home.

He was home. But there no Rey. No Eva.

There was no coping with this. He collapsed again but only to cry harder than he ever had before.

 

______________________________________________ 

 

The wailing of Eva had become nothing more than white noise. Rey's eyes were blinded by the light. She had become weary. She had become weak. The top of the raft was exposed to the sky and the sun ray's were sure to burn her skin. She couldn't bring herself to care though.

All she had to comfort her, as she lied there in a raft that was slowly falling apart was how the sun reflected in the water all around her, glistening with a beautiful light she could only witness by being out here in the middle of an endless ocean.

And then came two large white clouds. She had never seen clouds like the ones that were approaching her getting bigger and bigger with every second.

The strange clouds began to sway back and forth. Rey lifted her head slightly to see where from the sky they were coming from.

They were not of the sky.

Two massive white sails were dancing in her direction, attached to a boat...nothing like the one she had been on the night before. This boat was much smaller, brighter in color. It was one she thought of in her childhood, in her dreams of being rescued from the island. She imagined this would be the boat that would come to take her back to her family...to her home.

Her head dropped again. She was awake but too weak to comfort Eva who was lying close and kicking and screaming relentlessly. There was nothing Rey could do for her. There was nothing she could have done for Ben. All she wanted to do was sleep and keep dreaming of the boat infront of her.

She could barely budge when the edge of the sailboat tapped the raft.

On her side, Rey could see two men, tall old and weary. They looked like natural born sailors, not the ones on the black ship. Yet they were staring at her, almost shocked at what they were seeing.

“I don't believe it!”

The skinnier of the two men was the first to move, climbing out of the sailboat and carefully getting onto the raft. 

Rey could barely feel herself being sat up. “Drink up,” the man said. She almost had no idea what he was talking about, until her lips felt a drop of moisture. Water...actual drinkable water! The man struggled with the water bottle in his other hand until Rey grabbed onto it savoring as many sips as possible.

“Wanna get out of the sun?”

Rey nodded weakly. She was weary of the old reaching over to carefully get Eva. But what would fighting back do anymore? At least the man was kind enough to hand her back to her. 

She realized then, that he was helping her to stand up. The raft was making everything unbalance. The man was kind enough to guide Rey every step of the way as she held Eva in her arms. She was being guided to the rope ladder the other man dropped from the sailboat.

Rey didn't want to think about climbing ladders anymore but this climb was thankfully much much shorter.

Before her feet would touch the glorious wooden deck, she took note of the words 'Millennium Falcon' written on the sailboat's bow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chap will not take as long to post. I promise. :)


	14. The Prayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the final chap as I thought. 
> 
> I will be posting an epilogue sometime next week.
> 
> Love you all lots.

A cruel irony. That was what this was.

For Ben to die all alone, on the very island that drove him mad, yet made him so happy for the past two years.

The volcano had yet to erupt. But with each shake, the end was coming...anytime now.

After drawing the latest notch, Ben counted them all to maintain the last of his sanity. His little Eva was nearing a year old. 

He didn't want to think of using past tense. No matter how unlikely it was, he had to believe that both of them were alive. That they had been rescued or maybe found another deserted island somewhere. It was a deluded fantasy to be sure. It was better than thinking about wife and child having drowned or adrift and slowly dying from dehydration. 

The hours waged on and the loneliness came seeping in. This was what it had been like for Rey all those years. 

What he would give for this island's strange magic to bring them back to him. But not even that could save them now.

All he had left to do was to watch what might be his last sun set...hoping that the end would come soon.

______________________________________________ 

The old man didn't know what to make of his new passengers. He couldn't get the girl to utter a word since he brought her on board. Yet he knew she spoke English...had some sort of understanding of what he was saying. She just didn't seem to want to listen or respond, obviously traumatized by whatever led to her and the baby being out in the middle of the ocean.

And then there was the matter of their state. He assumed that the girl and baby got caught up in the storm from the night before. Yet they both looked as if they had been lost at sea for much longer than a night. Their clothing seemed torn to shreds. The man had to give up one of his beach towels because the baby didn't even had a diaper on.

He had questions but was unsure if the girl would even answer them. 

Rey's eyes slowly traveled all over the small, cramped cabin. The wood paneling was the closest reminder she had to her own home. Everything else seemed like something she had seen in another life...a couch...a screen...a bed. The man was preparing food at a kitchenette. Rey had only a vague idea of what those things were, yet once she saw them it was like remembering a strange dream. 

“Some storm, huh?” the man said. “Chewie and I were just right on the edge of it.”

Rey said nothing, hoping to end the conversation. But Eva, who had been napping by Rey's side was starting to wail again. Normally, the sound of Rey's voice would comfort Eva, but Rey was not much in the mood for opening her mouth. The man turned and Rey gave him an apologetic look as she tried to comfort Eva by picking her up.

“Don't worry about that,” he said. “If it weren't for that set of lungs, we would have never seen you out there.”

But Rey wasn't feeling grateful. She was starting to think that maybe it would have been better if she and Eva had drowned. 

At least they would be with Ben again then.

The man placed a plate of food infront of her on the table. It was the strangest food she had ever seen and the smell was getting overwhelming. There was little meat, and some strange squishy yellow stuff all over. No fruits but a strange array of small green plants she had never seen on the island.

There was a set of unusual metal tools sitting to the side of the plate. But Rey ignored those and picked up one of the squishy yellow things with her fingers. There was a confused look on her face when she put it in her mouth. 

The man was shocked and yet not so by what she was doing. Whoever this girl was, she seemed to have never eaten with a fork before.

Rey picked up the piece of meat. It tasted like no creature she consumed on the island.

“It's chicken,” said the man.

Chicken? Rey wondered how it could taste so good. Her hands starting to pick up more of the meat only eating the squishy yellow stuff on occasion.

Now the old man was starting to truly worry. This girl had clearly never had chicken before, let alone pasta. 

He was starting to question whether these were people or animals he found. 

“My name's Han. Han Solo,” he said. “Do you think you can tell me your name now?”

Rey looked at him, but made no gesture of 'yes' or 'no'.

Han sighed. “That's fine. How about telling me where you're from?”

This time, he was close to getting somewhere. Rey slowly opened her mouth as if trying to find the right word but then went silent again.

And that moment, Han had an idea. One side of the room was covered near floor to ceiling with a large blue paper (with various smaller papers along the sides. Much of it had been drawn with X's and squares. “Wanna see where we are?”

Rey didn't think much of the paper wall but something about all that blue...she had seen something like this before somewhere...and then she remembered...

The atlas, the little atlas that she used to carry. The one that Ben taught her to read.

She was going to break again. 

Han pointed at a small dot in the mass area of blue. “We're just around here.” Then he moved his fingers upward. “And over here is Hawaii. I told Chewie to start heading there. They have doctors and people that can help you.”

Rey looked at the green little dots consisting of this 'Hawaii'.

“I-Island.”

“Island?” said Han. “Uh, yeah...it's an island. Many islands.”

“Island.”

“You're from an island, aren't you?”

Rey nodded.

“Do you know the name?”

There was no answer. Rey's hand was mindlessly tracing the big blue map. Along the edges of it were a multitude of smaller papers...some containing words, other containing pictures. Rey could read now because of Ben, but she felt she still wouldn't understand what the words meant. 

Instead she took an interest in one of the pictures taped on the right side of the large map. It was of Han sitting by a bedside of a lovely woman who was as old as him.

“Just a reminder why I'm out here. Can't say I've been living up to what I promised her.” All of the sudden, it seemed that Han was the one having trouble finding words. He rarely talked to anyone he encountered at sea about what he and Chewie were really doing out in the Pacific. They would have thought him delusional. But what else was there to do?

It only pained him more when he finally took noticed of the ring on Rey's finger, and old pearl ring that was made of twigs as if done as a craft project.

“I think I'll go up on deck for a while,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

Neither of them noticed that Eva had been up and walking up to the map, tugging and tearing at all the papers attached.

“DADDA!”

Han stopped before taking his first step up the deck. He and Rey turned to Eva. She was jumping up and down at one of the pictures she was pawing at on the wall.

“DADDA!!!”

Rey didn't think about the fact that Eva was saying her first word. She was too stunned by the picture infront of her. It was Ben. Ben, clean and well shaven just like when she first laid eyes on him only without the scar. 

She pulled the picture out and was shaking. 

“Ben...”

Han was shocked. How did this girl know Ben's name. “Do you...do you know Ben? Do you know my son?!”

Rey looked up in shock. Han was Ben's father?!!

Before she could even respond, Han was grabbing her by the shoulders. “You've seen him? Where?!”

She was understandably scared by Han's overbearing desperation. The word came out of her once more, only because it was the only one she could think of. “Island!”

“Island?! Has he been on an island? Is he alive?!”

Rey said nothing.

“Hey!” Han was yelling in her face now. “Answer me! Is...Ben...alive?!!”

The tears came from her eyes. “Wa...water...” It wasn't a request for a drink. Han was finally starting to get the hint what Rey meant. He finally let go of her shoulders.

Ben...his son…

If it had been the storm from last night, he would never forgive himself. The Millennium Falcon was nearing the storm and he had made the call to move away from it. If only he had…

As he looked at the baby by Rey's side, then kept looking back Rey. He could see it...the similarities, between Ben and this girl. If she knew Ben, if she had been with him, then could it be…

“She yours?”

Rey nodded.

“And...” Han choked. “And his?”

The very thought that she was now in a room with Ben's family struck Rey hard. She could do no more, besides dropping to her knees and sobbing.

Han slumped over to the map and papers. Months of searching...all for naught. He was never going to live down how close he had been.

In quiet anger, he grabbed at the edge of the map, tearing off the largest chunk that he could. 

So much for promises being kept.

______________________________________________ 

Rey had no idea where they were going of what this Hawaii place even was. She thought maybe she heard the name before, but it couldn't be nowhere near as wonderful as her home...her island.

Han had spoken little to her, not even to ask about her time with Ben. The shock of it all was still getting to him. and he was trying to avoid the girls as much as he could...letting them sleep in the cabin while he and Chewie remained on deck.

But Rey felt cooped up...suffocated in the tiny wood \\-panel room. When night came, Han finally came back down to the cabin and Eva's wailing became the perfect excuse for Rey to escape back up deck. 

Up there, she met Chewie for the first time. He was a quiet fellow who asked Rey no questions, likely because Han had caught him up on the situation. He knew when he looked at Eva and saw the resemblance to Ben in her. 

He let them sit at the bow of the ship despite how dark it was. It was surreal for Rey to see herself in the middle of the ocean like this, never imagining that she would travel this far from home. The breeze she felt as the ship moved forward was like nothing she had felt before.

Eva seemed happy enough. But Rey was still in denial about what was happening. In only two days, her world had gotten larger than it ever had in her entire life. Yet she never felt more alone.

It was too much to take. She wanted to go back to the island, even if it meant her and her daughter's deaths.

Besides, Rey knew she stood no chance of being able to adjust to a normal life without Ben.

But how would she ever find her true home again?

She looked up to the night sky and saw a white flash. It reminded her too much of the day her life would change...the day Ben came into her world.

There was nothing left but prayers and wishes. If only she could reach the island gods from here.

' _Take us home_.' She closed her eyes and prayed, but to whom, she did not know. 

' _Please, take us home_.'

The next time Rey opened her eyes again, it was to a beautiful sunrise, painting the sky various hues of colors.

To the right, further across the water, Rey could see a small speck of land that their sailboat would slowly pass. 

A few hours later, the speck of land got much closer. That Rey could see the trees and hills. A small stack of smoke seemed to be coming up from the tallest peak. The boat had no intention of going there, only to pass by it. Yet she seemed almost certain...

It could be any island, she tried to tell herself. Hers was one of hundreds out here according to the maps.

She saw no signs of civilization, nor had she ever seen her island from the outside.

But it was possible that maybe...just maybe…

Soon, the boat was starting to move further away. She went downstairs to the cabin where Han was already making breakfast, but Rey didn't care for the meat he was cooking, which smelled like the boar Ben used to hunt on the island.

“Stop,” was all Rey could say.

Han was shocked, not so much by Rey being there but by what she said. “What?!”

“Stop!” She pulled Han back up deck and pointed the island out to him.

“You're crazy! We're not stopping there! You see the top of that mountain? That's a sure sign it's gonna blow! I'm gonna go wake Chewie so we can get the hell away from there.”

“No!” Rey protested at Han as he hurried back into the cabin. But it obvious Han wouldn't listen. She was getting painfully anxious with every inch they were getting farther away from the island again.

There was a choice to make. For herself...for Eva. And she wasn't going to regret it. 

By the time Han and Chewie went back up deck some minutes later, they hadn't expected for the girl and the baby to go missing.

“What the?!”

Chewie was the orange device in the water...the same life raft that the two men found them in the day before.

Rey was pushing the liferaft towards the direction of the island with Eva inside.

“ **HEY!!!!** ”

Rey ignored the calls of the men to come back. She knew the risks of swimming this far away from the shore. The life raft barely had enough air to keep Eva on but Rey kept kicking her legs with determination. 

“Goddamit! Come on, Chewie!”

The men hurried to get the ship turning around so they could follow Rey. They had underestimated what a good swimmer she was, and the tide seemed to be favoring her as it was helping to push her and the life raft towards the land. 

Eventually Rey was losing her strength, but seeing the beach closer and closer in sight kept her will going. Once she no longer needed to kick, she grabbed Eva and ran up to the beach dropping to her knees in exhaustion.

The sailboat finally touched land and Han jumped off, telling Chewie to stay with the boat in the likely event that they would need to make a quick escape.

“What is wrong with you?!” He yelled at Rey when he finally reached her. “Are you looking to get yourself killed?! Think about your kid!!!”

Speaking of Eva, she had squirmed out of her mother's arms and was toddling her way along the beach. Rey pushed herself up and slowly followed.

Han was shaking his head, not knowing what to do. This girl was clearly not going to listen to him. 

He finally caved and pursue them as they rounded a cliff corner.

On the far end of the beach was a structure, almost like a house.

Rey was standing before it, crying.

And it was here that Han was putting the pieces together…

“You and Ben lived here?”

Rey sadly nodded. 

Eva was running happily towards the house yelling “DADDA! DADDA!” But both Rey and Han knew nothing would be found there. They followed Eva into the house as confirmation that they were right.

Han knew it would take time for Rey to want to get back on the boat, if she even wanted to at all. “You need to think about her,” he told her calmly, knowing she was filled with too many emotions at the moment. “Think about what Ben would want for both of you.”

Rey knew he was right. She was being foolish. Still, besides Eva, what else did she have in this world?

“I'll give you ten minutes and then we're leaving. Decide then if you want to join us.” Han stepped out of the house, leaving the two girls to enjoy what was left of their home.

Fortunately for Han, he did need to take a leak and the jungle was close enough. But after he was done, he found himself rather disoriented. All this greenery looked the same and the humidity was getting to him. What an idiot he was to step inside a foreign jungle with no clue as to where he was going. Now he was lucky if he could find his way back to the boat.

The ground shuddered sending birds into the air and the trees rustling. The wind was picking up too, making it seem like he was hearing whispers all around him. Whatever animals he could hear, weren't sounding very friendly...

…and now movement ahead revealed one such creature coming towards him.

Han cursed himself for not bringing a weapon to defend himself with. He resorted to grabbing the strongest looking stick he could find. He probably didn't stand a chance against whatever was out there. 

Through the leaves, he could see it get closer. It was starting to look more and more like a man. It wouldn't look good for him to be holding a stick against another human being so he slowly dropped it.

The man, behind the trees, stopped and stared...almost terrified at what he was seeing.

He made his way forward breaking through the trees and Han nearly tripped stepping back from what he was seeing.

A ghost...it had to be. He looked like him...horribly like him. The man had a large scar across his face, his hair was longer and his face far more rough. His clothes were shabby and he wore no shoes.

“ _My son is dead_ ”, he kept whispering to himself. And yet the man that stood before him was him. And they both looked horrified to see one another.

They stood their for an eternity until Han made the first move, raching out to touch the man's face.

“No...” the other man was shaking.

“Ben?”

Han was pushed back. “No!”

His voice...Ben's voice!

“Ben...”

“Get back!” the man screamed pushing Han away again. “You're not real!”

“Ben, it's me!”

This Ben was shaking his head in denial, as if going mad. “No...not you. Just a vision. I thought I was done with these!”

Han didn't know what he was talking about. All that mattered now was seeing Ben here. “Ben, I'm your father! I'm real!”

His son screamed again, this time charging Han to the ground. With one hit, Han's nose started to bleed and then he felt the grip on him loosen. 

The man was horrified...not with guilt, but with realization. He pulled Han up and this time, he was the one touching his face. His fingers smeared some blood from Han's faced. 

The blood…

It was real. This was real.

Han managed to pick him up before he could fall to his knees.

“Ben...”

And now Ben was holding onto his father sobbing.

“It's me Ben. It's really me...”

“How?” Ben whispered.

“The Falcon...I...had nothing better to do I guess...”

“You would look for me?”

“Of course, I would Ben!”

They kept hugging for a long time. “Mom?”

Han frowned and Ben knew what it had meant. “Ten months after we heard about the crash. You...you knew she was having trouble with the chemo…,” said Han. “She never gave up on you, though. She always believed you were alive. Made an idiot like me promise to find you. You know you can't ever say no to her.”

It made Ben recall the time he saw his mother in the jungle. It started to make sense now. What he saw was her on her deathbed...a ghost guiding him, perhaps guiding them both.

“Snoke is dead,” said Ben. He knew that was something Han would want to hear given all the history.

“Save the stories for home.” He helped Ben up. “Come on, let's get you back to civilization.”

His son, having knowledge of the island, guided them both back to the beach. Before they got there, Han said “I think I won't be the only one happy to see you.”

Ben was given no time to think.

Seconds after getting to the beach, he saw what he thought was Rey and Eva sitting on the sand.

This had to be a dream. He even swore he had heard Eva's voice in the jungle calling for her dad.

But Rey was looking at the men in shock, disbelief…

“BEN!!!”

She was running over to him, stumbling along the way. Ben in turn slumped towards her.

“Rey?!”

She threw herself at Ben bringing to them both to the sand.

They couldn't believe it. “It's you!” said Ben as he was kissing every tear coming down Rey's face. “It's really you?!”

Consumed by their joyous reunion, Han decided to lend a hand, picking up Eva and bringing her over to Ben. “DADDA!”

Ben couldn't be more happier. Her voice in the jungle had been real. He was her first word.

This moment...this was everything.

But the family reunion would be disrupted by one shake of reality...one massive puff of dark smoke bursting out of the air.

“Now or never,” said Han.

They all agreed. The group had to make a dash toward the boat with the skies darkening from the arriving smoke.

One quick reunion hug with Chewie later, Ben rushed to help his father get the boat sailing. Every second was a familiar rhythm of the few times had gone sailing with him in his youth.

They could see the smoke rising and the rumbling increase when the boat finally pushed away from the beach. Bits of raining ash landed on the boat but nothing that would hinder their escape.

The wind, oddly enough began blowing the opposite direction from whence they had arrived. But Rey knew why.

The island knew it was its time. And it was helping them...pushing them away from the destruction.

She, along with Ben and Eva, watched from the stern of the boat the ash rolling in, consuming the island like a massive storm cloud. The trees and mountains seemed to sink into the water.

It wouldn't be long before the only home Rey ever had would disappear completely as if it had never existed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy?


	15. Epilogue (and thank you notes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for being late with this. I really needed to get this done. 
> 
> Can I just say, THANK YOU EVERYONE for all the love I have gotten with this fic. I didn't think I'd break 100 reviews with this. XD. I definitly had so much fun writing it (especially Ben's breakdown in chapter 4). 
> 
> I wish I could get my butt going on more stories but stories are hard for me to write and I got so much life stuff going on right now, I doubt I'll have any new stories happening before TLJ comes out. Let's hope that film gets the writing juices going again. 
> 
> Once again, thank you guys. I'm constantly lurking on this site like a pervert. So hopefully I will see you all around.

**FIVE YEARS LATER**

“Are your eyes closed, Rey?”

“Yes, Ben, for the fifth time,” said Rey who was focused on trying to guide her way through the house blind...a house she come to appreciate every detail of. Not one made of palm leaves or scrap metal but one she could call her own with Ben.

She could feel the cool breeze and knew they were stepping outside.

“Okay.”

Ben removed the cover from her eyes and Rey didn't know whether to cry or laugh.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!” The little girl ran over and hugged Rey around the leg. “Do you like it?”

The whole backward had been decorated with tiki torches and some of the tackiest fake palm trees that could only come from a party supply.

“Look!” Eva pointed at the flower-shaped pink paper that adorned some of the trees. “I made those.”

“I see that.” Rey shook her head and turned to Ben. “Is this because I said I was homesick? I meant that as a joke.”

“Did you now?” asked Ben. “That island was a huge part of your life. I thought you'd be missing it.”

“Only because it's been a while.”

Already on the patio table were bowls of ice cream for all three. Rey had the largest with all chocolate. The memory still made both of them smile. Chocolate ice cream had been the first thing that Rey tasted when they got to the United States and she cried emptying the entire bowl. Ben thankfully had been sensitive enough no to laugh. For Rey it was like being home again even though she had no memory of life before the island.

It had been that day, that Rey decided, she wanted to be her birthday from that point on.

“I know I shouldn't eat all of that,” said Rey. “That's a lot of chocolate for the baby.”

Ben laughed. “Someone to share your addiction with.”

Rey continued to take bites. “Eva wasn't bad to have you know. I'm sure this doctor, will be good with this one.” 

Ben and Rey had kept a low profile when Han brought them to the states. Navigating the coastal cities had been far too overwhelming for Rey as Ben had predicted. His family would find solace in the rural areas where Rey could adjust to a civilization she had been stranger to gradually. Rey fell in love with the cool breezes and pine trees that she had never known before. Their next child would be born in winter, her new favorite season. It was perfect.

Still, the thought of giving birth in a hospital as opposed to a jungle she had grown up in still made her nervous.

“I'm done mommy!” Eva placed a familiar melon-looking man on the table. “BB-8 has come to the party!” Bb-8 had become a birthday tradition that Ben taught Eva to create. She would talk to the melon just like Rey did all those years ago.

But at least now, Eva would never be alone.

“BB-8 can't wait to see the new baby too!”

“We still have some months to go on that Eva,” said Ben.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Eva.”

“Were there other people on the island?”

It was a question that made both Ben and Rey choke. “What?”

“When I was a baby on the island, weren't there other people?”

Ben knew at that moment, it had been a mistake to share with her daughter stories about the island where she was born. “No, Eva. It was just us...just you, me, and mommy.”

“Okay,” Eva said optimistically. “Maybe I dreamed them.” She ran off to play like the naive typical 6-year-old that she was. 

Rey tried to calm down. “She couldn't have remembered...how...”

“Don't worry about it, Rey. They're just memories now.”

Just memories. Rey would have to remind herself that as she fiddled with the pearl necklace around her neck. 

Some things about the island, she would never let go of, even if she wanted to. The same could be said for Ben. From the day he landed there, he should have known that the island would always be a part of them from then on out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end. Hope you like.


End file.
